Table of Contents

Spring Thaw

Killing Bid

Beauty to Die For

Countdown to Murder

Lucky Dog

The Gnarly Rehabilitation Program

A Gnarly Christmas

About the Author

Check Out  Lauren Carr’s Mysteries!

Attention Book-Clubbers!

Winter Frost

The Root of Murder

Murder by Perfection - Excerpt

SPRING THAW

A CHRIS MATHESON COLD CASE NOVELLA

& OTHER MYSTERY SHORT STORIES

By

LAUREN CARR

SPRING THAW: BOOK INFORMATION

All Rights Reserved © 2018 by Lauren Carr

Beauty to Die For

All Rights Reserved © 2013 by Lauren Carr

Countdown to Murder

All Rights Reserved © 2013 by Lauren Carr

The Gnarly Rehabilition Program

All Rights Reserved © 2014 by Lauren Carr

Killing Bid

All Rights Reserved © 2013 by Lauren Carr

Lucky Dog

All Rights Reserved © 2012 by Lauren Carr

A Gnarly Christmas

All Rights Reserved © 2013 by Lauren Carr

Published by Acorn Book Services

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author. For permission requests, write to the author at the email address below.

For information, call: 304-995-1295

or e-mail: writerlaurencarr@gmail.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Designed by Acorn Book Services

Publication Managed by Acorn Book Services

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Covers designed by Todd Aune

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Published in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Spring Thaw

Killing Bid

Beauty to Die For

Countdown to Murder

Lucky Dog

The Gnarly Rehabilitation Program

A Gnarly Christmas

About the Author

Check Out  Lauren Carr’s Mysteries!

Attention Book-Clubbers!

Winter Frost

The Root of Murder

Murder by Perfection - Excerpt

SPRING THAW

A CHRIS MATHESON COLD CASE MYSTERY SHORT

Charles Town, West Virginia—Six Years Ago

The blast of the vehicle’s horn sent shock-waves through the darkened church building.

In the spacious corner office that had formerly been home to the previous congregation’s pastor, Bishop Lawrence O’Donnell ripped his dark-framed glasses from his round face. “What the hell!” He pointed a thick finger at Liz Jennings. “You’ve created this mess.”

Liz’s eyes grew wide behind her cat-eye tortoiseshell frame glasses. “I’m the one who kept this church together, which is more than I can say for you.” She pointed a stubby finger adorned with a large rhinestone at the religious leader.

The horn blared again—this time broadcasting its message in one long continuous blast to the occupants inside the office.

“Liz, I’m ordering you to go shut that bastard up!” the bishop ordered.

“Don’t.” An elderly man with thin gray hair, Reverend Truman Holmes polished his thick eyeglasses, put them back on, and peered through the window. “We should be still and pray.”

“Liz, what did Duane mean when he said you ripped his family apart?” Rusty Patton, the youngest of the church’s two remaining trustees, asked.

“Nothing,” she snapped.

“I have known you to—”

“Shut up!”

The vehicle outside erupted with a long ear-shattering blast.

“Son of a bitch!” Bishop O’Donnell hoisted his robust frame from the overstuffed chair, stomped to the door, and threw it open.

“Damn you to hell, McCall!”

O’Donnell’s curse was answered with a barrage of gunfire. Bullets riddled the front of the building. The window shattered. The two men and woman inside the office hit the floor and covered their heads. They didn’t move until after the roar of the vehicle’s engine died down to a throbbing silence—a sign that the perpetrator was gone.

“Bishop,” Reverend Holmes gasped, “are you okay?” He rose onto his hands and knees. His legs too unsteady to stand, he crawled to the motionless body. “Sir?” He laid his hand on the man’s shoulder.

Something warm and moist soaked the knee of his pant leg.

The reverend looked down at the bishop to find three bullet holes in his chest.

Present Day

The chill from the morning rain wafted through the barn walls to pierce Chris Matheson’s jacket and nip at his bones. He fought off the cold by cleaning the horse stalls as fast as he could. He anticipated the warmth of the freshly brewed coffee that would be waiting for him in the kitchen.

Chris was in such a rush to get inside and warm up that he almost collided with Sterling when the German shepherd dodged the attack of a mother cat. He had gotten too close to her week-old kittens. The hundred-pound law enforcement canine yelped when the feline’s claws connected with his snout.

“Haven’t you learned yet?” Chris told the dog who shook his head to alleviate the scratch’s sting. “The house is your territory. The barn belongs to the cats.”

After Chris finished his chores, the two of them dodged the April shower’s heavy raindrops to sprint back to the farmhouse. The smell of coffee warmed Chris’s insides while he yanked his boots off and hung his coat on the rack in the mud room.

“It must be cold outside,” his mother, Doris, called in from the country kitchen. “I could see your breath when you came running down from the barn.”

“The rain is colder.” Chris shoved his feet into a pair of slippers and trotted to the coffee maker. He grabbed a mug and found the pot empty. Dismayed, he turned around to gawk across the counter to where his mother sat at the head of the table.

Clad in purple satin pajamas with a floor-length robe, Doris sedately caught up on the news on her computer tablet. With one long leg crossed over the other, she swung her foot with a high-heeled slipper hanging from her toes. Her two dogs, Sadie, a Doberman, and Mocha, a golden lab, lounged on the floor on either side of her chair.

At six-thirty in the morning, most women would still be gathering their wits about them. Not Doris Matheson. Not a strand of her thick blond hair was out of place. At sixty-five, she exuded a timeless beauty. Wrinkles added character, not age. The widow of a West Virginia State Police captain volunteered much of her time to animal welfare causes and her church’s mission work between directing the local library.

The only sound in the room was Sterling scarfing down his breakfast. Thor, Chris’s three daughters’ bunny ate her breakfast. Clad in a pink faux fur jacket, the twenty-five-pound French lop-eared rabbit looked nothing like her namesake.

With a sigh, Doris took a leisurely sip from her mug before swiping an elegant finger across the tablet’s screen to move on to the next news item.

“Does that coffee taste good?” Chris directed the glare of his gray eyes at the back of her head.

“It’s probably a little old by now, Christopher,” Doris said. “Can you be a love and make a fresh pot?”

With a heavy sigh, Chris filled the carafe with water.

“They haven’t cancelled the field trip,” she said. “The weather is supposed to clear up by mid-morning.”

Chris groaned. That meant he was obligated to spend the whole day chaperoning Katelyn’s eighth grade class trip to Hershey Park. He had hoped it would be rescheduled to another day—preferably a warmer one.

Finished with his breakfast, Sterling picked up Thor by the scruff of her neck and trotted up the back stairs to wake Chris’s seven-year-old daughter for school.

A widower, Chris had retired from the FBI and moved his daughters back to the family farm after his father’s sudden death. It was an even exchange. He tended to the farm while Doris helped raise his daughters.

Despite the warnings about watched pots, Chris stared at the dark liquid dripping into the coffeemaker’s carafe—waiting, watching, yearning for it to fill his empty mug.

“Nonni!” Katelyn galloped down the stairs from her bedroom. “What do you think about this?” With her arms held out wide, the pretty blonde swept into the kitchen like a star making a grand entrance. Katelyn was clad in a bright pink lace overlay over a sleeveless midriff top with matching capri leggings and ankle boots.

Upon seeing her father, Katelyn stopped. A gasp escaped her lips before she forced a broad smile across her face. “Hi!”

In silence, Chris took note of her appearance. He narrowed his eyes. “Hi.”

Katelyn hurried to the table where her grandmother had set down the tablet and turned in her chair to inspect the ensemble. “Which do you like better? This outfit or the blue skirt and sandals?”

“Both of those are kind of formal for a day at the amusement park.” Chris cast a glance at the coffee pot. It was only one-third full. The way his day was going, it was two-thirds empty.

Katelyn fought the grin making its way to her lips. “Well, Cole asked me to sit with him on the bus.”

“Cole?”

“Cole McCall,” Doris said. “Kelly’s son.” She gave Katelyn a thumb-up sign. “This is perfect.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Chris saw that the carafe was nearing the halfway point. If he moved fast enough—He snatched the pot from the coffeemaker and filled his mug.

Relieved that her father was more interested in the coffee than giving her the third-degree about Cole’s intentions, Katelyn rushed upstairs to finish preparing for the field trip.

Grateful to have his coffee, Chris joined his mother at the table only to find her holding out her empty mug. Doris flashed her most maternal grin. With a sigh, Chris returned to the pot. After filling his mother’s mug, complete with cream and sugar, he turned around and almost tripped over Sterling donning his law enforcement vest and holding his leash clutched in his jaws.

Even though the dog was only two years old, he was retired. The German shepherd had been confined in a crate in the rear of his partner’s cruiser during an ambush. Sterling had sustained two shots to the chest.

Sterling wore his service vest for a license to get into public places with Chris, who took the dog almost everywhere with him. The dog’s training, as well as that of Sadie and Mocha, had proven invaluable in the community. All three had ventured out of retirement on more than one occasion to save lives.

“Sorry, big guy,” Chris said. “You can’t go to the amusement park with us today.”

“Oh, come on.” Doris continued scrolling through the items on her tablet, “Sterling behaves like a champ and everyone loves him.”

“Not everyone,” Chris said while handing the mug to her before sitting. “I can hear Marcia now.” He rose his voice to a high pitched whiney elderly tone. “We have not made any arrangements with Hershey Park to bring a security canine.”

“Lie and tell her that you did.”

“I don’t see any paperwork,” Chris continued the impersonation. “Did you go through the proper channels? Don’t you think I would have requested that you bring Sterling if I wanted him?”

“Give Marcia a break,” Doris said. “Life’s tough when you’re perfect.”

With a chuckle, Chris took a sip of his coffee and enjoyed the warmth flowing down his throat to embrace his insides. He closed his eyes in gratitude, only to be startled out of his happy place by a shriek that sent Sadie and Mocha scurrying out of the room. “What happened?”

Doris’s mouth hung open while she scrolled through the article displayed on her tablet. “Duane McCall.” She turned to him. “The grand jury indicted Duane McCall for murdering Bishop O’Donnell.”

“Duane?” Chris whispered. “Kelly’s dad?”

“Kirk must be turning over in his grave.” Doris shook her head.

“Dad and Duane didn’t speak for years.” Chris took the tablet from her to read the article. “Duane didn’t even go to his funeral.”

“Duane cut a lot of folks off,” Doris said, “including his only son.”

“They were best friends since I can remember. What happened between them? I can’t believe their friendship ended just because Duane chose to stay with the denomination.”

Doris arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think Duane chose. Liz Jennings is one manipulative piece of work. That’s why we call her ‘Liz the Lizard.’ She’s the one who told the investigators that Duane killed the bishop.”

“Well, that can’t be all the prosecutor presented to the grand jury,” Chris said. “Liz told that story the night of the shooting, and they didn’t arrest Duane then. They must have uncovered new evidence.”

Doris fired off a glare in his direction. “You’ve known Duane since you were just a little boy. Can you seriously believe that gentle man is capable of shooting up a church and killing a man?”

“I could never believe that Duane could turn his back on us—cut off all contact—out of the blue without any explanation.”

“That was one mystery that none of us could solve,” she said. “I mean, he complained the loudest of anyone about the direction the bishop was taking the denomination. Then suddenly, when we decided to leave, he did a one-eighty and decided not only to stay, but to cut us out of his life. Even when Kara had her nervous breakdown—”

“I never thought of Kara as the type to have a breakdown,” Chris said.

“After her suicide attempt, Reverend Ruth and I drove out to Duane and Abby’s house to visit with Kara and—” She shook her head. “You should have seen the look Duane gave me. He barely spoke to me. He was like a different man. Neither Ruth nor I had a clue about what was wrong with him. That night, I told your father something was up.”

“But Kara’s okay now,” Chris said. “She did go back to school and got her undergraduate degree.”

“Kelly, Duane’s own son, has no idea what happened to make his father turn against us. Believe me, I’ve asked him.” She uttered a heavy sigh. “Now Duane has been indicted for murder.”

“Even if Bishop O’Donnell did have the moral compass of a used-car salesman,” Chris said, “Liz claimed—”

“Liz Jennings is a liar. We’re talking about the same slimy reptile who betrayed our congregation. She contacted the bishop and fed him a bunch of lies—not the least being a whopper about Reverend Ruth breaking into the church safe and stealing the Sunday offering in anticipation of being fired. Liz claimed it had to be Ruth because she had a master key to the building, knew the location of the safe, and where they hid the combination.” She shook her finger at him. “Do you know who else matched that criteria?”

“You.”

“Besides me! Liz the Lizard! Liz Jennings proved to one and all that she can’t be trusted. I think she stole it to set Reverend Ruth up.”

Chris peered at the picture of Duane McCall, his late-father’s former best friend. “What happened, Duane?” he muttered more to himself than anyone else. “One day you’re a respected family man—loved by all. Then, suddenly the church splits and you walk away from your friends and only son.” He skimmed the write up in the news story. “Bishop Lawrence O’Donnell. Liz the Lizard Jennings. Rusty Patton. Duane McCall. The three trustees. They were all there that—”

“Plus Reverend Truman Holmes,” Doris said.

“That name sounds familiar.”

“He’d retired from a very small church out in Berkeley before he was asked to take over preaching after the split,” Doris said. “I think your youth group helped with a mission project for a family from his congregation back when you were in middle school.”

“Very domineering. Detail oriented.” Chris scratched his ear. “Someone told me that he had served in the Vietnam War and that really messed him up.”

Doris nodded her head. “He used to talk about how he had gotten very deep into drugs—trying to overcome his demons from Vietnam. It was only by the grace of God that he got clean. He became a preacher to help others with his story.”

“His wife was a very peculiar woman,” he recalled. “She wore big thick glasses.”

“Rose Marie.” Doris uttered a low laugh. “She used to come into our library. She does freelance work as an editor. She sold their home and moved to Berkley Springs. Her husband died less than a month after the shooting.”

“Really?”

“He had an ulcer,” she said. “He’d get horrible stomach pains. Rose Marie begged him to go to the doctor, but he wouldn’t. When the bishop appointed him to take over the church, it only got worse. The stress of witnessing the murder and the investigation afterwards must have gotten to him. One night after dinner, the pain got really bad. She wanted to take him to the emergency room, but he refused. He died in his sleep.”

“Less than a month after Bishop O’Donnell was killed.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Doris said, “but Reverend Holmes dying of an ulcer had nothing to do with Bishop O’Donnell’s murder.”

“What happened that night?”

“Duane got into a fight with all of them and resigned as trustee.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. Your father was left in the dark during the investigation because of his friendship with Duane.” Doris took both of their mugs to the coffeemaker to refill. “Bishop O’Donnell and your father did go a few rounds. The first time was the night they met.” She shuddered. “It was my fault. I had dragged your father to a conference where Bishop O’Donnell was speaking shortly after he had been appointed bishop. Well, what we did not know was that he was very anti-military.”

“Are you kidding me?” Chris asked.

Doris poured the coffee into the mugs. “His whole speech was anti-American and anti-military. He basically stated that our government was an instrument of Satan training our young people to be killers.” She covered her face with her hands. When she looked up, she let out a breath. “Then he started trashing law enforcement.”

“If we didn’t have law enforcement, criminals would be running the country.”

“It gets worse,” she said. “We had the misfortune of landing in the same elevator with Bishop O’Donnell while going up to the dinner afterwards. After Kirk told him point by point where he was wrong in his speech, Bishop O’Donnell let loose with a string of obscenities like I haven’t heard since you bit your grandma on the toe.”

“How does a man like that rise through the ranks in a church—”

“How did the pharisees and rabbis who plotted to kill Jesus Christ move up through the ranks of the Hebrew church?” She handed the mug to Chris and slid back into her seat. “We’re all human, Christopher. That makes us susceptible to falling prey to the wolves dressed in sheep clothing. Unfortunately, so many who don’t know any better don’t realize they’re in danger until they’re being devoured.”

“Apparently, you, Reverend Ruth, and the others didn’t get sucked in,” Chris said. “Neither did Dad.”

“Oh, Bishop O’Donnell hated Kirk from that point on,” she said with a shake of her head. “Kirk humiliated him with the facts, and all the bishop had to defend his side was personal insults and four-letter words.” With a chuckle, she added, “He backed off after your father broke his finger?”

“He broke his finger?”

“He gave O’Donnell fair warning.”

“Dad was nice that way.”

“The Sunday before the vote to split, the bishop made a point of coming to our worship service to chew everyone out for even considering leaving the denomination. Well, he cornered Kirk and chastised him for not controlling me better since I was a trustee. The way O’Donnell saw it, I should have been promoting the direction their denomination’s leadership was taking us. Of course, you know your dad.”

“He never could control you,” he said with a grin.

“He knew better than to try.” She took a sip of her coffee before continuing. “Well, Bishop O’Donnell made his point by poking your father in the chest. He let the bishop get away with it for only so long. Then, he told him to stop. The arrogant SOB he said he would stop when he was finished. To which, Kirk warned him that if he touched him one more time that he would act accordingly.”

Chris cringed. “I can only imagine.”

“At which point, Bishop O’Donnell poked your dad in the chest. Seconds later, he was on his knees with a broken finger. The congregation gave your father a standing ovation.” With a curl of her lips, she said, “That was the unofficial vote to leave the denomination.”

“I don’t expect Reverend Ruth drove the bishop to the hospital to have his finger fixed.”

“Be serious.” She giggled. “She did offer to amputate it for him.”

“One year later, Bishop O’Donnell was shot to death in what had been Reverend Ruth’s office.”

“Liz the Lizard claimed it as her own after O’Donnell tossed us out.”

“Trustees don’t have offices,” Chris said.

“Unless you’re a turncoat who got the reverend fired, and the congregation locked out of the building.”

“Tell me what happened the night of the murder.”

“That night, Duane McCall resigned as trustee. Bishop O’Donnell told Duane that he couldn’t quit and if he did, the denomination was going to sue him personally.”

“On what grounds?”

“A rarely used clause in the church’s bylaws,” she said. “Anyway, your father told me that according to what he learned from the detectives, Duane told them all to go to hell and left. Liz claimed that ten minutes later, Duane pulled up in front of the church in his truck and laid on the horn. The bishop threw open the door, stepped outside, and Duane emptied a gun into the side the building, hitting O’Donnell in the chest, and drove off.”

“What about Rusty?” Chris asked. “Did he see anything?”

“He stated that he was eating carpet. The gunshots blew out the windows and hit the walls behind them.”

“But Liz—”

“Saw the whole thing.” She rolled her eyes. “Or so she says.”

“If bullets were flying all over the place, why wasn’t she eating carpet with Rusty?”

“Good question.”

“What about Reverend Holmes?”

“That jackass,” she muttered. “He stated he didn’t see the shooter but did get a look at the truck while he was driving away. Other witnesses who had seen Duane said he was driving his wife’s car because Kara had taken the truck since her car had broken down. Kirk proved Reverend Holmes was unfamiliar with the type of truck Duane drove. To the reverend, all trucks looked alike. Therefore, he was incapable of identifying Duane’s—especially considering that it was dark at the time of the shooting and the killer basically blinded everyone with the high beams.” She uttered a sigh. “Poor Duane. Kirk would be devastated. Even though they had stopped being friends, Kirk tried to protect him.”

“Maybe it’s time to get to the truth about what really happened once and for all.”

“Duane wants nothing to do with any of us.”

“Since when has that stopped us?”

Juggling her briefcase, lunch box, mocha latte and a chocolate croissant in a paper bag, Lieutenant Helen Clarke squeezed through the state police barrack’s heavy security doors. Abruptly, her cell phone burst forth with a snappy dance jingle.

“Your phone’s ringing,” the officer behind the bullet proof glass told her.

“Thanks.” Her hands full, Helen was forced to ignore the phone while trotting to her office, that of the chief of homicide.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” one of the detectives said when she danced past him. “Your phone’s ringing,” he added as if she couldn’t hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers singing on her hip.

“Thanks.” Helen spun around to say with a note of sarcasm about his lack of help.

By the time she got into her office, the Red Hot Chili Peppers had stopped singing. A quick check of her call log indicated that the missed call was from Chris Matheson. A smile came to her lips. Helen rushed to take off her coat and hang it up, put her lunch in the portable fridge, and set up her breakfast on her desk. After running a brush through her auburn hair and checking her lipstick, she sat behind the desk and called him back via video. She suppressed her grin of pleasure to see that he was not wearing a shirt.

“Hey, beautiful,” Chris greeted her. “What’cha doing?”

Helen held up her latte. “Breakfast. You?”

“I just got out of the shower and am getting dressed to spend the day with my favorite thirteen-year-old.”

“The field trip is still on?”

“Weather is supposed to clear up.”

“Here but not there,” Helen said. “The front is heading for Hershey.”

“Did you hear that Sterling? The class trip may be cancelled.” Chris glanced over to where Sterling was lying with his head hanging over the edge of the bed. The dog peered up at Chris with pleading eyes. “You goof ball.” Chris turned back to Helen. “Sterling doesn’t like spending the day home with the girls. Mocha and Sadie ignore him, and Thor is the opposite. She won’t leave him alone.”

“Ah, the drama in the animal kingdom.” Helen took a sip of her latte.

“I’ve got a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“The Bishop Lawrence O’Donnell murder.”

“Six-year-old cold case. Just got an indictment handed down yesterday,” she said.

“What evidence did the prosecution have against Duane McCall?”

“Two eyewitnesses and the murder weapon.”

“Two witnesses? Who?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Only one of the witnesses at the scene claimed to see the shooter. Now, you have two?”

“Another witness has come forward,” she said. “Plus, we’ve found the gun.”

“Where?”

“Along the Potomac River bank. A clean-up crew found it after the snow from that big storm in mid-February melted and the river flooded. Ballistics matched it to the bullets in the bishop and the side of the church building.”

“Reverend Holmes and Liz Jennings claimed that the shooter was driving a truck. Well, McCall’s daughter had his, so it couldn’t have been him.”

“The witness who told the police that Kara McCall had Duane’s truck recanted her statement,” she said. “Kara had called her the morning after the shooting and asked her to be her alibi. Having no idea about any murder, she agreed and told police that Kara had her father’s truck. Who is McCall to you?”

“Duane was Dad’s best friend, and our families used to be close. His son and I are still friends.” Chris checked the time. “As a matter of fact, he’s chaperoning this field trip today.”

“Well, Duane does have one thing going for him,” Helen said.

“What’s that?”

“The murder weapon. It’s a M1911 pistol—at least sixty years old. It’s standard issue for the military until the 1980s.”

“Duane was never in the military,” Chris said, “and I don’t think he ever owned a gun.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said. “I think the prosecution is going to have a hard time connecting your friend to the gun. Something that old? It’s the type of gun that old soldiers lock up for memorabilia.”

“That information could be useful in leading us to the real killer,” Chris said.

“In the meantime, Duane McCall’s lawyer scheduled for him to turn himself in this morning. He’ll be here in about an hour and be arraigned this afternoon. I’m sorry, Chris.”

“So am I.” He flashed her a wide smile. “But I still love you.”

“Love you more.”

“Did you tell Marcia that you were bringing Sterling?” Kelly McCall asked after Chris and Katelyn had raced through the torrential rain to run into the school gym. The students and chaperones were waiting to board the buses for the class trip.

Chris turned around in time to get splattered by Sterling shaking off the rainwater that had drenched his pelt. After he had finished, the German shepherd picked up the end of his leash as if to take himself for a walk and sat next to Chris.

“You did it again, didn’t you?” he asked the dog.

Sterling wagged his tail.

“Did what?” Kelly asked.

“Stowed away in the rear seat of my truck. He tucks himself in behind my driver’s seat and if I’m in a hurry, like this morning, I don’t notice.”

“You’re going to be in trouble with you-know-who.” Kelly slapped him on the back. “Don’t look now.”

Marcia marched across the gym floor toward him. The middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and tiny eyes on her pinched face clutched her clipboard to her bosom.

“Christopher, you are aware that we’re going on a two-hour bus ride.” Marcia curled her lips with disgust at the German shepherd pressed against Chris’s leg.

“If we go,” Kelly said. “The forecast calls for thunder storms on and off all day.”

“If we don’t go today, we’ll have to reschedule for the beginning of June,” Marcia said. “Many of the children who’ve already paid will miss the trip because they’ll be traveling with their families.”

“I’m sure their families would rather deal with that than having their kids struck by lightning,” Kelly said.

“The powers that be are deciding what’s best to do right now.” Marcia studied the dog hiding behind Chris’s legs. “Christopher, would you mind explaining the German shepherd eyeballing me from between your thighs?”

“Sterling is a trained law enforcement canine,” Chris said. “He’s an extra set of eyes with a keen sense of smell and awareness.”

“Just this past winter, he saved the sheriff and several of his deputies’ lives by warning them of a bomb inside a house they were going in to search,” Kelly said.

“Do you know how many germs dogs have?” she responded.

“Do you know how many lives military and law enforcement canines have saved throughout the years?” Chris countered while ignoring Kelly’s mocking facial expressions behind her back. “Sterling won’t be any trouble. I will take complete responsibility for him.”

“You certainly will.” She shoved him aside and galloped off to discuss another important matter that needed her attention.

While Chris let out a sigh of relief, Kelly burst out laughing. They took their seats in the bleachers to await the decision of the principal and Marcia. Within moments, Sterling was invited into a game of catch on the gym floor.

Cole McCall was a younger version of his father with dark hair and eyes. As soon as Katelyn and Chris had arrived, the two teenagers had ditched their backpacks and joined their friends. A rumble of thunder from outside hinted at the fate of their outing.

“I saw the news item about your dad,” Chris told Kelly. “I’m sorry. But if this class trip gets cancelled, you’ll be able to make the arraignment this afternoon.”

“Why would I want to go to the hearing?”

“Because he’s your father.”

Kelly cocked his head at him. “Chris, Dad and I haven’t talked in seven years. Him being indicted for murder doesn’t change anything.”

“Kelly, I know you too well. You ask about your dad every time you talk to your mother. You’re still close to Kara. There’s nothing you can do to convince me that you don’t care about him.”

“It was only a matter of time before Liz got someone in the prosecutor’s office to take the case to the grand jury—especially since Hardwick became head of the county commission.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Liz and Hardwick are old army buddies,” Kelly said. “From what I’ve been able to find out, the O’Donnell case had gone cold until Hardwick became head of the commission. Then Liz started telling Hardwick about how embarrassing it is was that the murder of a church bishop in our own county was allowed to go cold.”

“Hardwick started putting pressure on the sheriff,” Chris said, “who put pressure on the prosecutor. I had no idea Liz Jennings was in the army. How long ago?”

“She’s in her fifties. Maybe thirty years ago.” He shrugged his shoulders. “What gets me is that Liz Jennings clearly has an ax to grind against a lot of people. How peculiar is it that when they suddenly get a break in the case, it is a surprise witness by the name of Nolan Jennings?”

“Nolan Jennings? Liz’s son?”

Kelly nodded his head. “As fire chief, I’ve got a lot of friends in the police department. Your father managed to discredit Reverend Holmes’s statement about recognizing the shooter’s truck as Dad’s.”

“Because Kara had the truck,” Chris said. “Now suddenly her friend recanted her statement. How does Nolan figure into this?”

Kelly smirked. “He’s a drug dealer. He got on the police’s radar years ago when he started driving a jaguar while he was in high school. It was an old one, but still… Finally, they thought they nailed him.”

“Did Liz know her son dealt drugs?”

“Of course,” Kelly said. “She’s been covering for him for years. Every time Nolan got into trouble, Liz covered for him—supplying him with alibis—you name it.” He glanced around before adding. “Back before the split—I mean right before—someone stole the Sunday offering out of the safe.”

“Liz told everyone Reverend Ruth did it because she had keys to the church and the safe combination,” Chris said. “But so did Liz, who was working for O’Donnell to keep the congregation from breaking away.”

“It didn’t look good for the bishop to lose a fairly big church,” Kelly said. “The only way Bishop O’Donnell could save face was to make it look like we had bad leadership under Reverend Ruth. After the split, they accused her of everything from financial mismanagement to outright theft of church property.”

“Mom is convinced Liz stole the offering to frame Ruth.”

“The office manager had the safe combination written on a card and hidden under the pen compartment in her desk,” Kelly said. “The inside circle—like trustees—knew that. Nolan hung around the church office waiting for his mom frequent enough to see where the safe combination was kept.”

“During which he cased the joint,” Chris said, “and stole the church’s Easter offering.”

“It’s been a known secret that Nolan did it. Your dad just couldn’t get enough evidence to arrest him. All the teenagers knew Nolan was dealing drugs, stealing money, and worse. A while back, Kara told me that she had a friend who suddenly got sick at a party and she wasn’t drinking. The next morning, she had no memory of what had happened. Weeks later, some friends mentioned Nolan had generously offered to drive her home.”

“He slipped her a date rape drug.” Chris glanced across the gym to where Katelyn and Cole were leaning against the wall and talking. He shoved the notion of what he would have done if someone tried something like that with one of his daughters.

“I told Kara to tell her to go to the police,” Kelly said. “Kara said so much time had passed her friend was afraid no one would believe her. It would have been her word against Nolan’s that he’d raped her.”

“She wasn’t drunk. Suddenly she’d gotten sick, and he drove her home and she had no memory of what had happened afterwards,” Chris said. “If she’d report it, even now, then a case could be made for sexual assault.”

“Most women don’t report it.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Liz accusing Ruth of the burglary at the church served two purposes,” Kelly said. “One, it discredited her in the denomination and church community. Two, it divert attention from Liz’s dirty rotten son.”

“Is that what’s happening now? Nolan is claiming he knows your father killed Bishop O’Donnell to help his mother protect the real killer?” Chris asked.

“Nolan doesn’t have a noble bone in his body,” Kelly said. “He’s doing what he has to do to keep his own butt out of jail. Two weeks ago, the police finally got Nolan on drug possession with intent to distribute. He was looking at jail time.”

“So he offered to play let’s make a deal,” Chris said. “And they believed him? After all these years? No one ever mentioned Nolan being at the crime scene before.”

“He isn’t claiming he was there,” Kelly said. “Nolan says he was hanging out at a bonfire down by the river with a bunch of friends and he saw a white pickup truck. He recognized Dad behind the wheel. He claims Dad toss something into the water. Less than a minute after he left, Nolan heard the police sirens. When he got home, he found out what had happened, and he realized what Dad must have thrown away.”

“If that’s true, why didn’t he say anything before now?”

“Nolan saved the information for a get-out-of-jail free card,” Kelly said, “which the prosecutor gave him.”

“Nolan’s lying.”

“Dad needs a lawyer hungry enough to prove it.”

“Any lawyer—” Chris stopped when he saw the worry in Kelly’s eyes. “Your dad does have an attorney, doesn’t he?”

Kelly shook his head. “Things haven’t been going too well for my folks for a long time—since Mom retired and Dad’s health hasn’t been that great. With what they have and the victim being a church bishop—at this point, all Dad has is a public defender.”

Chris took out his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“I know a guy.”

“Of course. Is this guy a lawyer?”

“A winery owner. He’s in my book club.” Chris said into the phone, “Hey, Bruce! It’s me, Chris. What are you doing today?”

“Great,” Kelly mumbled. “When Dad goes to jail, we can all get drunk on fine wine.”

“Excuse me! I’d like everyone’s attention, please?” Marcia called out in her loud, whine-filled voice from the center of the gym floor. When she didn’t attract enough attention, she clapped her hands until there was silence.

“I need a favor,” Chris said into his phone.

“Christopher Matheson!” Marcia snapped. “I have asked for everyone’s attention. That means you.”

Chris became aware of all eyes on him—including Sterling who was sitting at attention. Katelyn looked like she wanted to melt into the floor. Slowly, he lowered the phone to await the announcement that they were expecting.

“I am sorry to announce that the class trip has been rescheduled for June the first,” Marcia said. “Students will be expected to go to their regularly scheduled classes. Parents, you may return to your homes—”

After the two fathers handed the backpacks to their children who rushed off to class, Chris resumed his conversation with Bruce Harris. Parents made a mass exodus for the exits. Sterling sat in front of Chris and stared up at him to find out where they were going next. While he gave Bruce the general information about the case, Chris was aware of Kelly watching him closely. The concern on his face was unmistakable.

“Can you help?” Chris asked after giving Bruce a rundown on the charges.

“Well, I’ll have to reschedule my afternoon nap,” the retired lawyer said. “What did you say the name of the defendant was?”

“Duane McCall,” Chris said. “He was a friend of Dad. I’m sure you heard him mention him.”

“Is this murder victim the same bishop whose finger your father broke?” Bruce chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll help. I’ll be there as soon as I put the cat out.”

“I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“I don’t have a cat. That’s why I’m putting him outside. He used to belong to the folks down the road—until he ran away from home after they had a baby. He’s been staying here with us where it’s quieter.”

Chris bumped Kelly’s fist as soon as he disconnected the call. “Now that the class trip has been rescheduled, you can go to the courthouse for the arraignment.”

“No, I can’t,” Kelly said.

“Why not?”

“That man disowned me. He tried to tell me, a grown man with three children, where I could take my family to worship. When I stood up to him, he wrote me out of his life. He refuses to come to our home. He won’t acknowledge me or my wife or his grandkids. After all of that, I can’t just walk into a courtroom where he is being arraigned for murder.” He bit off his words. “I can’t do it.”

“Oh, yes, you can.” Chris looked around the emptying gym. “Where’s Sterling?”

Kelly gestured. “He’s behind you.”

Chris turned around.

Sitting tall, Sterling was clad in a black hoodie and dark sunglasses. The hood was pulled up and wrapped around his head, leaving only his long nose exposed. The sunglasses were perched on his nose.

“I see you’ve been working undercover again,” Chris said.

The Jefferson County Court House was surprisingly packed with friends, foes, and curious onlookers anxious to get the gritty details of the villain who’d gunned down a church bishop. It was all just too unbelievable.

Doris had arrived early to reserve the row of seats behind the defense table for herself and Duane’s family. She was bound and determined to be there for her old friends in their hour of need whether they wanted her to be there or not.

As the scheduled time for the hearing approached, a steady stream of spectators spilled into the courtroom. Doris waved when she saw a familiar face with long wavy strawberry blond hair make her way through the crowd. “Ruth! Over here!”

Reverend Ruth broke from the pack. “How did you know I was coming? I only decided a bit ago.”

“The same reason I’m here.” Doris gave her a hug. “Kirk will haunt us if we don’t do everything we can to help Duane. He forgave the old fogy for being a moron. We have to, too.”

“I’ll sit with you only if you promise not to do anything crazy like the last time.”

“You’re safe, Ruth. I was forced to leave my pistol at the door.”

Ruth moved around her to take a seat inside the row while Doris continued looking for Duane’s family. She was so busy watching for familiar faces that she didn’t notice when an older woman with ebony hair and a dark wool coat approached her.

“Doris? Is that you? It’s been so long.”

Doris was unable to match a name with the face until Ruth greeted her. “Hello, Rose Marie. I thought you were wintering in Florida.”

“I came back Easter week,” Rose Marie Holmes said. “I’ll be leaving at the end of the month to go on a Mexican cruise with a friend.” She smirked when she said the word “friend” to imply he was a special friend.

Since the last time Doris had seen her, Reverend Holmes’s gray-haired widow with thick eyeglasses had received laser surgery, dyed her hair, and had gotten a face lift.

“Rose Marie, you look great,” Doris said. “Summers in Florida. Cruises. Sounds like you’re having a grand time.”

Rose Marie flashed Doris a coy grin before whispering in her ear, “Truman dying was the nicest thing he ever did for me.” With a giggle, she took a seat in the row behind them.

Doris stared at her in shock.

“Merry widow,” Ruth said in a low voice. “Truman was like fifteen years older than Rose Marie and she was very young when they got married. After over thirty years of being dominated, I could see how she’d feel like a bird suddenly released from a cage.”

“Doris! Ruth!” Abby, Duane McCall’s wife, burst out of the crowd with her arms outstretched. Without hesitation, she rushed into Doris’s arms and proceeded to sob into her shoulder. “I’m so glad you came. I am so sorry for how Duane treated Kirk and all of you. None of this would have happened if he had trusted Kirk. That damn fool was just too proud to tell him the truth.”

“Truth?” Doris pulled away and Ruth stepped forward to give Abby a hug. “What’s the truth?”

“I can’t tell you. I promised Duane.”

“Hello, Abby.” Liz Jennings wore a smug grin across her broad face as she propelled her motorized wheelchair down the aisle to take a spot directly behind the prosecutor’s table. She laced her sausage-like fingers together and rested them on top of her obese stomach. “It’s a big day, isn’t it?”

With a huff, Abby slipped into the row to sit as far from her husband’s accuser as possible.

It had been several years since Doris had seen Liz Jennings. She had expected the fellow church trustee to have aged, but not to such an extent that she was unrecognizable. Liz resembled an enormous pumpkin plopped into a wheelchair with a second, smaller, pumpkin glued on top for the head.

Didn’t she used to have a neck? Doris asked herself while cocking her head from one side to the next. She was in such awe of the Liz’s deterioration that she failed to hear the woman’s biting insults directed at them.

Not only had Liz’s body expanded, but so did her arrogance, which she displayed with a cocky smirk that stretched across her face—making her more unattractive.

“That’s what happens when you open the door to pride,” Reverend Ruth told Doris in a low voice. “Pride is the first of seven deadly sins. When you let pride inside, it opens the door for the other six.” The pastor jerked her chin in Liz’s direction. “Before you know it, all seven of them consume you.”

“Looks more like she was the one who consumed them.”

As Doris had predicted, the weather was lifting. The low-hanging clouds were starting to part to allow ribbons of sunshine to dangled upon the countryside.

As Chris drove past the Charles Town Library, a car pulled out and Kelly snagged the parking space for his SUV. That left Chris to circle the courthouse, driving further out, until he found a space on a residential block populated by the historical colonial style homes.

After securing Sterling’s service vest, Chris slid out of his truck and led Sterling back toward the heart of town. They had only walked half a block before Chris heard a woman sobbing. As the cries drew closer, he spotted Kara McCall, Kelly’s younger sister, sitting in the front seat of her car.

Sterling tugged on the leash to trot around to the driver’s side of the car and jumped up to whimper in a show of sympathy. Upon seeing the big German shepherd peering at her through the window, Kara shrieked.

Chris pulled the dog down. “Kara, it’s me. Are you okay?”

Kara wiped her nose with a paper napkin. “No. Dad is going to jail, and it’s all my fault.” She opened the car door and slid out.

“I’m sure it’s not your fault. It was his decision to get mixed up with Liz Jennings and the bishop.” Together, they stepped onto the sidewalk and stroll toward the town square.

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t have made that decision if it hadn’t been for me.” She chewed on her bottom lip.

“Kara, our families used to be close,” Chris said. “If we can do anything to help, all you have to do is ask. We still care about you.”

Tears returned to her eyes.

He stepped in front of her and stopped—blocking her path. “Your Dad could end up going to jail for something he didn’t do. Now is the time to tell us the truth.”

Kara let out a shuddering breath. With a whimper, she sat on the curb and buried her face in her hands. Chris sat next to her. Sterling laid on her other side and placed his head in her lap. She stroked his soft ears.

“It happened the night after my graduation,” she said. “I went to a big open house in Shepherdstown.” With a sense of defiance, she turned to him. “I wasn’t drinking.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But,” she said, “Liz called Dad after midnight to tell him that she found me passed out in my car at Duffield’s train station and the front of my car was smashed. Apparently, I had hit something and took off.” She returned to stroking Sterling’s ears. “My last memory was being at the party.”

“And Liz convinced your father that if my dad found out about it, you’d go to jail.” Chris felt his blood start to simmer. “How could he believe that?”

“The next morning, the news said a teenaged boy in Shepherdstown had been hit and killed while riding home on his bike,” she said. “Liz convinced Dad that it was me and that—for my sake—he had to stay as far away from your family as possible.”

“Because Dad would certainly have figured it out,” Chris said. “And all this was happening just about the time that things were brewing in the church. Since Liz was so helpful, she expected your father to back her.”

“If not, she’d go to the police.” Tears dripped down her cheeks. “We couldn’t tell anyone. We didn’t even tell Kelly because he’d insist that I turn myself in.”

“Of course, because that would have been the right thing to do.”

“I swore I didn’t have anything to drink,” she said. “I couldn’t understand how that happened. Someone had to have slipped me something.”

“Guilt must have eaten you up,” Chris said. “That explains the suicide attempt.”

In silence, she nodded her head.

“I imagine you and your parents were both relieved and angry when Dad arrested a suspect in the hit and run a year later and he confessed. Then, your father realized that Liz had manipulated him—forced him to end a very good friendship—all for her own selfish reasons.” He shifted to catch her eye. “That’s why he was fighting with Liz and the bishop and the others that night. Why didn’t he tell Dad?”

“I think he was ashamed. He’d cut Kelly and his family off. After a year, there was so much that Dad was ashamed of. We all felt like fools.”

“Even so, Dad didn’t give up on any of you,” Chris said. “He worked behind the scenes to protect your dad, even with Liz lying about him shooting up the church.”

“But now he’s not here to help Dad anymore.”

Chris sucked in a deep breath. “No, he’s not.”

Her eyes sparked as her sorrow turned to anger. “Why are they arresting Dad, anyway? Everyone knows Liz is a two-faced liar.”

“It seems your alibi recanted and said she didn’t see you with the truck that night.”

“That still doesn’t prove Dad shot up the church and killed Bishop O’Donnell.”

“Nolan Jennings needed a get-out-of-jail free card. He told the police that he was hanging out down at the river with friends and saw your dad pull up in his truck and toss the murder weapon.”

Kara’s eyes grew wide. Her mouth dropped open.

“I’m sorry, Kara.” Chris reached for her hand. “We need to go.”

“That slimy worm is a liar just like his mother!”

“And we’re going to do everything we can to prove it.”

“Not just you.” Kara grasped his hand and stood up—pulling Chris to his feet. “Me.” A smile came to her lips. “I’ve got just the proof to bust this case wide open.”

Tucking the Siamese cat under his arm, Bruce Harris raced up the sidewalk and through the doors of Charles Town’s historic courthouse. He made it as far as the security check point before the armed guard held up both hands to stop the lanky silver-haired attorney. “Hold it right there, Mr. Harris. With all due —”

“Don’t have time to argue. Late for the McCall arraignment.” Before the security guard could voice his objections, Bruce dropped his briefcase on the conveyer belt and trotted through the metal detector. He grabbed his case and raced up the stairs to the second floor.

“You can’t take that cat into the courtroom,” the guard shouted up the stairwell. “Judge Reardon is highly allergic.”

When his phone began ringing, he adjusted the cat to dig it out of his pocket. The cat growled his displeasure. At the top of the stairs, Bruce read the caller ID to see that it was Chris. “I’m here,” he said into the phone.

“Great,” Chris said. “I’ve got a witness for you.”

“This is an arraignment,” Bruce said. “I just say ‘not guilty,’ call the prosecutor an idiot, and then we arm wrestle over bail.”

“This witness can prove beyond any doubt that one of prosecution’s witnesses is lying and discredit the other one both at the same time,” Chris said. “I’m making a detour to get physical evidence and will be there in five minutes. Ten at the latest.”

“I’ll try to stall.” Bruce burst into the courtroom while the bailiff was calling for everyone to stand for Judge Jeanine Reardon. The cat still tucked under his arm, he waited at the door until the judge was seated.

The cat uttered a “Rrowl” upon seeing the serious looking woman step up onto the bench.

Bruce patted his head. “Mind your manners, Darn It.”

While the bailiff announced Duane McCall was being arraigned for the murder of Bishop Lawrence O’Donnell, Bruce rushed forward to the defense table. “Bruce Harris for the defense, your honor!” He collided with the public defender standing in the spot reserved for counsel.

“Excuse me?” Duane’s attorney responded.

“You’re excused,” Bruce said before leaning toward the defendant. “Christopher Matheson sent me. You’re going to want my help.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” the defense lawyer said. “He’s in very good hands.”

“I graduated top of my class from the University of Virginia law school and retired as their state attorney general,” Bruce said. “Can you top that?”

“I hear my parking meter calling.” The attorney slinked away.

As he hurried away, Bruce caught the eye of the prosecutor who looked more than a little intimidated. “You should be afraid, be very afraid,” Bruce warned him while studying the obese woman and slender young man in skinny jeans and a hoodie sitting behind the prosecutor.

A sneeze from the judge’s bench caught Bruce’s attention.

“Mr. Harris, that cat had better be your co-counsel,” Judge Reardon said while wiping her nose with a tissue.

“He’s a witness for the defense, your honor.” Bruce handed the cat to Doris. “The defendant pleads not guilty and counsel requests to approach the bench.”

The judge narrowed her eyes. “This is simply an arraignment, Harris.”

“Yes, but I promise you, your honor, if you’ll indulge me for just a few minutes, we can save the court a lot of time, money, and trouble.”

Spotting a potential friend, Sterling galloped up the street to the man in an ill-fitting suit locking the door to the insurance company office. The dog greeted him with a nose tap on his butt.

Hank Smith uttered a shriek at the unexpected goose and turned around to face Chris Matheson, who was breathing hard from the three-block sprint. “Hi, Hank!”

“Sorry, if you wanted to see me. I’m on my way out to lunch,” The agent said while pocketing his keys.

“We’ll only be a few minutes,” Chris said. “We need a copy of a claim.”

“I know who filed it and the exact date, too,” Kara said as she jogged up to join them. “All you have to do is check your records and print it up.”

Hank stepped around them. “Come back in an hour and I’ll—”

“That will be too late,” Kara said with a sob.

“It will only take a moment,” Chris said, “and Mom will be very grateful.”

Hank stopped. “Your mom?”

Chris shot a grin in Kara’s direction. “She’s the one who sent us.”

“D-Doris sent you?” Hank smoothed his thin hair.

“She told us not to talk to anyone else,” Chris said. “You’re the best insurance agent in the whole tri-state area.”

“And the most dashing,” Kara said.

Hank stood up straight. His voice rose an octave. “Doris thinks I’m dashing?”

“That insurance claim will blow the case against Kara’s dad wide open,” Chris said. “It’s a key piece of evidence that’ll save the day. You’ll be a hero.” He frowned. “But… if you’re too busy to help…” He looked up to the sky. “I’m sure Mom will understand when I tell her.”

“Now let’s not be too hasty.” Hank dug his hands into his jacket pocket.

“Women love heroes,” Kara said. “In the movies, it’s always the hero who gets the girl.”

That was all Hank needed to propel him to run back to the door and unlock it.

Bruce Harris had to do some fast talking to convince Judge Reardon to allow him to call Nolan Jennings to the stand to go over the statement he had given to the police.

Through his friendship with the late police captain, Bruce was familiar with Nolan Jennings’s past. Kirk Matheson had suspected Nolan of burglarizing their church before the congregation split from the denomination. With no sign of forced entry, the culprit had to have had access to the church building’s master key, be aware of the safe’s location, and where the office manager kept the combination. Besides Reverend Ruth, the only ones who fit the bill were the church’s trustees. Yet, Nolan had accompanied his mother to the church many times. Through Liz, he had access to everything necessary to have pulled off the burglary—especially the criminal tendency.

Despite Nolan’s reputation among the local population of being a drug dealer and a thief, his record was clean. His devoted mother was not above using threats, extortion, or bribery to keep it that way.

“Liz should be pleased,” Bruce thought while watching Nolan swivel in the leather chair on the witness stand. “Nolan is a two-faced, back-stabbing scumbag—just like his mother.” He glanced over his shoulder at Liz Jennings, who was smirking across the aisle at Doris Matheson. Both Doris and Darn It, the Siamese cat in her arms, were glaring back at her.

“So like,” Nolan was saying, “me and a bunch of my friends were hanging out down by the river next to Millville. We had a bonfire going. We were just sitting around, talking and stuff when suddenly this big white pickup truck came speeding by. It swerved off the road. I thought the guy was drunk he was driving so fast. He skidded to a stop and jumped out. I recognized him right away.” He pointed to the defendant sitting next to Bruce. “It was him. Duane McCall. My folks and I had been going to his church for years. So he runs to the riverbank and threw something into the water. I didn’t see what it was though. Then, he got back into the truck, turned it around and drove off, heading for Harpers Ferry. After he had gone, I heard the police sirens. I didn’t know he’d shot Bishop O’Donnell until after I got home a couple of hours later and Mom told me about him shooting up the church.” He made a motion of wiping his eye. “He could have killed Mom.”

Bruce suppressed a chuckle—followed by a startled jump when he felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He turned around to find Chris squatting behind his chair. He handed the lawyer several copies of a report.

“We got him.” Chris pointed at the highlighted portion of the report.

Bruce put on his reading glasses to skim the contents on the insurance claim while the judge asked if he had any questions.

“Yes, I do.” Bruce fought to contain his excitement.

“You need to call Kara McCall to the stand,” Chris said in a hiss before moving back to a seat in the last row. He sat with Kelly, Kara, and Helen. Sterling’s tail stuck out into the aisle from where the dog was snoozing against the back wall.

“Mr. Harris,” the judge said with an impatient tone. “You promised to save us time.”

“Which is what I’m going to do right now.” Bruce stood. “Mr. Jennings, that is a very interesting story that you have just told the court.” With a flourish, he handed a copy of the report to the prosecutor, the judge, and then one to Nolan. “I am now going to ask you to read to the court another story. Can you please read the highlighted paragraph of this report that I have just given to you?”

Nolan stared at the paper in his hand. After silently reading the paragraph, he looked up with confusion.

“You do know how to read, don’t you, Mr. Jennings?” Bruce asked.

“Your honor,” the prosecutor objected, “he’s insulting the witness.”

“It’s an honest question,” Bruce said. “My information tells me that this witness only attended school to study pharmaceutical distribution. Isn’t that why the police had arrested him? And wasn’t the prospect of spending many years in jail what made him suddenly grow a sense of civic duty?”

“Read the highlighted section of this report, Mr. Jennings,” the judge told Nolan in a raspy voice. “And Mr. Harris, can you and your cat-hair covered suit stand back?”

“At seven o’clock in the evening of May eleven, I went to visit a friend of mine at an apartment complex at 113 South High Street in Martinsburg,” Nolan read. “I parked my jaguar in the parking lot across the street. When I left his friend’s place about one o’clock in the morning, I found that someone had vandalized my car. All four tires were flat. The headlights and windows were broken, and they had keyed it. The leather interior was ripped up, too.”

His face pale, Nolan shoved the report back to Bruce.

“Didn’t you just testify to the court, under oath, that you were at the river in Millville, on May eleven at eight o’clock in the evening?” Bruce asked with mock innocence. “And yet, days later, you filed this claim with your insurance company stating that you were in Martinsburg during that time period on that same night.”

“This insurance claim proves nothing,” the prosecutor said. “So his car was in Martinsburg? He could have gone with his friends to Millville—”

“He states in the claim that he left his friend’s place at one in the morning,” Bruce said. “I’m through with this witness for now. I’d like to call Kara McCall. She can clear this all up.”

The prosecutor glared at Nolan as he descended the witness stand. Liz frowned at him when he took his seat next to her.

“What am I supposed to ask her?” Bruce hissed to Chris.

“Ask her what she saw the night of the murder,” Chris replied in a stage whisper.

“Ms. McCall,” Bruce said, “tell the court what you saw on the evening of Bishop O’Donnell’s murder.”

“She’s the defendant’s daughter,” the prosecutor said, “and she was not at the crime scene.”

“So noted,” the judge said. “Go on, Ms. McCall. Where were you on the night in question?”

“I was on South High Street in Martinsburg stalking Nolan Jennings,” Kara said.

“You were stalking Nolan Jennings, the prosecution’s witness?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” Kara said. “I was driving Dad’s truck because my car was in the shop. So there’s no way Nolan or Liz Jennings saw my dad driving the truck. At six o’clock that evening, I saw Nolan fighting with Rose Marie Holmes.” She pointed at the late reverend’s widow sitting directly behind Doris in the gallery.

From his seat, Chris noticed Rose Marie sit up straight. She directed her attention to the back of Nolan Jennings’s head.

“When he left, I followed him to Martinsburg,” Kara said. “He parked his jaguar in the lot across the street from the apartment building, just like he’d said in the report. He didn’t even notice me following him. He was probably too anxious to take care of business. A lot of drug users and dealers live in that building. I don’t know that because I’m a dealer or user. I’ve just heard a lot talk.”

“Were you there that whole evening—stalking him?” Bruce asked.

“The whole night.” Kara smiled at Nolan. “Because I wanted to see his face when he came out and saw what I did to his car.”

“Are you telling the court, under oath, that you vandalized Nolan Jennings’ car?”

“That would be me,” she said with a wide grin. “One of the things he forgot to mention—about the leather seats—I carved my initials in them, so he’d know. But’s he was too stupid to figure that out.”

“Why did you do that, Ms. McCall?”

“Because I spent a year in hell thinking that I’d killed a boy. Everyone said I was drunk—but I hadn’t been drinking. I thought someone had spiked the punch at a party I had been at. But I found out that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the punch. It was my drink—my drink alone.” She pointed at Liz. “Nolan’s mother, Liz Jennings, convinced my dad that I had gotten drunk and ran this boy down and then ran. I tried to kill myself because I felt so guilty thinking that someone had died because of me. Then, after a year, the real hit-and-run driver confessed.”

Crossing the courtroom, Bruce locked eyes with the mother and son team. “Liz and Nolan Jennings manipulated the situation for their own agendas. That would make anyone in your situation angry.”

“Liz Jennings basically blackmailed my father to help her stab Reverend Ruth and our church in the back. We lost good friends—friends I’d had my whole life because Nolan’s mother told us we couldn’t trust them.” She pointed at Nolan and Liz Jennings. “They’re the ones you can’t trust.”

“Jennings deceived Duane McCall,” the prosecutor said. “That’s his motive—”

“When I went back to my friends to find out what had really happened the night of the open house, I discovered that Nolan Jennings had offered to drive me home after I got sick. He’d slipped me a date rape drug—”

“Does the witness have any proof—” the prosecutor objected.

“I have witnesses!” she replied. “Friends who saw him get me a soda! Ex-friends of his who told me that he bragged about how fast I got stoned after drinking only a little—”

“Hearsay!”

“—and how bummed he was when he crashed my car into a tree because he himself was high himself!”

The prosecutor was on his feet. “Your honor!”

“I’ll allow it,” the judge said. “Your witness isn’t on trial yet. We’re having this hearing to determine the credibility of your witnesses. Right now, counselor, it’s not looking good.”

Nolan shuffled around his mother’s wheelchair, but before he could dart for the door at the back of the courtroom, a foot shot out to trip him. He fell face first onto the floor with a loud crash. He shot a glare at the owner of the foot.

With an exaggerated expression of innocence, Doris pointed at the cat in her arms.

“Doris, you shouldn’t have,” Reverend Ruth said in a loud whisper.

“No, I shouldn’t have.” Doris looked up to the ceiling. “Please forgive me.”

A low growl from only a few feet away caught Nolan’s attention. Sterling was crouched in front of him—his snarling snout only inches from his nose. The canine’s eyes were narrowed to slits.

Kara continued, “I found out that I wasn’t the first girl Nolan had done that to. I was lucky. He didn’t rape me. Instead, he and his mother put me and my family through hell.”

Bruce stepped to the judge’s bench. “In light of this evidence, the defense is moving for a dismissal of the charges against my client.”

The judge sneezed. Gesturing for Bruce to step back, she asked the prosecutor, “Do you have any evidence besides the Lying Jennings to connect this defendant to the murder?”

“No, your honor,” the prosecutor grumbled.

She pounded the gavel. “Case is dismissed.”

The McCall family shouted.

Reverend Ruth gazed up to the ceiling. “Thank you, God!”

Kelly rose from where he was sitting next to Chris. “Excuse me. There’s a nose I need to break.”

Chris grabbed his arm. “It wouldn’t do your family any good for you to land in jail for assault just as your father is getting off the hook.”

The prosecutor turned around to face Liz Jennings. “All deals are off.” He gestured to Helen and the guard in the back of the courtroom. “Take Nolan Jennings into custody now. And I’m expecting a full investigation into these allegations of sexual assault.” Upon noticing the empty chair next to Liz, he asked, “Where’s your son?”

“I have no idea,” Liz said with exaggerated innocence before putting her wheelchair into reverse.

Duane McCall stepped around the defense table to find himself face to face with his son. The two grown men eyed each other with apprehension. Abby rushed over to hug Kelly while Kara hugged her father.

“Why didn’t you tell me about what was happening with Liz?” Kelly demanded. “Or even Chris’s dad? We would have been able to uncover the truth much sooner and exposed Liz and Nolan for the snakes that they are.”

“Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” Doris said. “We can’t go back to change what happened. We can only change the future.” She craned her neck to find Bruce to return his cat, who had made himself at home in her arms.

Noticing another animal in the courtroom, Sterling circled her.

“She’s right,” Reverend Ruth said. “You two need to forgive each other and move on.”

“Do you know what Dad told me about grudges?” Chris said. “A grudge is like a rattlesnake. You never want to hold on to it because it’s nasty and it’ll kill you.”

“That’s what happens to you when you hold on to a grudge.” Doris tossed her head in the direction of Liz Jennings.

Her face twisted in anger, Liz was plowing her wheelchair through a group of journalists pelting the prosecutor with questions.

“If you two don’t hug it out, I’m going to knock your two heads together,” Abby said. “Then, we’re all going home—Kelly, that means you, too. We’re having dinner together as a family and that includes my grandkids.”

At first apprehensive, the two men wrapped their arms around each other for a frosty hug that dissolved into a warm embrace.

As they pulled apart, Duane gazed up at his son. “You’re too skinny. Hasn’t that wife of yours ever learned how to cook yet?”

Kelly shook his head. “Not really.”

“Your mother tells me Cole has a girlfriend.”

Kelly and Chris exchanged glances. “I wouldn’t call her a girlfriend,” Kelly said in a low voice.

“They’re exchanging texts all the time,” Abby said.

Kara nodded her head. “At thirteen, that makes them boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Who is she?” Duane asked.

Kelly gestured at Chris. “Katelyn. Chris’s daughter.”

Duane’s eyes grew wide. “A Matheson woman?” Pulling Kelly in close, he lowered his voice. “You and I need to have a long talk with that boy.” He winked at Doris.

“You haven’t changed one bit, Duane.” Laughing, Doris hugged her old friend.

Kara was wiping tears from her eyes when Rose Marie Holmes joined the group to congratulate Duane on the dismissal of the charges. “I must say, this arraignment was different.”

“It was awesome,” Reverend Ruth said.

“Though, I feel I must correct the record on one account.” The pastor’s widow directed her attention at Kara. “Your memory of what happened on the evening of the shooting was faulty. I don’t know who you thought you saw Nolan with at Panera Bread, but she was not me.”

“But—”

“Nolan’s mother was a trustee at the church where Truman preached, and I was a preacher’s wife then, but I barely knew that boy. I certainly did not have dinner with him.”

Kara was shaking her head. “I saw—”

“Nolan was with someone else,” Rose Marie said. “I do remember what happened that night because it was the night my husband could have been killed. God graced me with his love for a few more weeks before calling him home. I clearly remember everything that happened like it was yesterday. I fed Truman an early dinner. He left for the meeting and I spent that evening reading a book until Truman called me to tell me what had happened.”

Her mouth hanging open, Kara looked from Rose Marie to Chris and then Doris, whose eyes were narrowed.

“I’m not one to nitpick, but since we are talking about the murder of a bishop here, I feel that it’s important we keep the facts straight. I’d hate to have my name dragged into a murder investigation. At the very least, I have my reputation to protect.” Rose Marie forced a grin across her face. “I’m sure you all understand.”

“Yes, we do,” Doris said in a smooth tone. “We understand perfectly.”

Snapping orders to uniformed officers and guards, Helen rushed in from where she had been searching the courthouse. “Nolan Jennings has escaped.”

Chris met her at the door. “Are you kidding me?”

She spoke into her radio. “He has not doubled back to the courtroom.”

Kelly rubbed his fist. “I’d love for Nolan to come back here.”

“We have every exit blocked,” Helen said. “There is no way he left the courthouse.”

“Well, if every door and window is blocked,” Doris said, “the only other way for him to escape is the roof.”

Helen’s eyes grew wide. “The bell tower!”

Chris grabbed Sterling’s leash and followed her up the steep narrow steps leading to the very top of the building’s historic tower. Sensing that he was being called to duty, Sterling squeezed around Helen to climb ahead. Kelly was on Chris’s heels.

A blast of cold air blowing down the stair well proved Doris’s hunch had been correct. The door leading onto the roof was open.

Helen fell back against the wall to radio the officers combing the building. “He’s on the roof!”

Without hesitation, Sterling launched himself onto the steep roof of the Georgian style courthouse to pursue the young man crawling on his hands and knees across the rough shingles. The courthouse’s roof ended with an eight-foot drop onto the annex’s roof, which adjoined the old jailhouse. From there, Nolan could make his escape down the fire escape.

Nolan had only made it a fraction of the way to the other side before the hundred-pound canine closed the distance between them and pounced on his back. Sterling clamped his teeth into Nolan’s shoulder and refused to let go. Fearful of falling to the street below, Nolan wrapped his arms around the pointed top of the roof and screamed hysterically.

Chris paused at the doorway to assess how best to reel them inside without having to step out onto the very tall, very steep roof himself.

“You’re missing all the fun, Matheson.” Kelly marched past Chris and across the roof without hesitation.

“What are you doing?” Chris called to him. “You can fall.”

“I’ve walked across roofs while they were on fire,” the fire fighter said over his shoulder. “This is nothing.”

Upon reaching Nolan, Kelly grabbed him by the hood of his jacket. “Hey, Jennings, did you rape my sister?”

“No,” Nolan shrieked. “Honest I didn’t.”

Kelly lifted him from where he was clinging to the roof. Intent on not letting his prey get away, Sterling tightened his grip on Nolan’s shoulder. “But you spiked her drink, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Rip his arm off, Sterling.”

Nolan screamed when Sterling tightened his hold. “Okay! Okay! I wanted to rape her, but I hit that tree and—” His confession was cut off by Kelly’s fist.

Chris cringed as Nolan collapsed unconscious. Kelly’s grip on his hoodie prevented him from rolling to the edge and falling to the street.

“What happened?” Helen asked when she made it to the door.

“Nolan fell and hit his mouth on the top of the roof,” Chris lied. “Luckily, Sterling grabbed him by the shoulder and Kelly caught him by the hoodie. They saved his life.”

Helen arched an eyebrow at him. “Kelly and Sterling saved Nolan’s life?”

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Chris and his mother were exhausted after their event-filled day.

Helen’s daughter sixteen-year-old daughter, Sierra had picked up Chris’s daughters after school to take them to the McCall home. The evening was one of reunion. Many of Duane’s former friends arrived to mend fences. Of course, you can’t have a celebration without food—of which there was plenty. There were enough casseroles and desserts to fill the McCall’s kitchen and dining room table.

Chris had finally relented to eat a second slice of cherry pie. He felt sorry for it being all alone, the last slice, in the pie pan. In the chair next to him, Helen was stroking the Siamese cat that Bruce had neglected to pick up before leaving the courthouse.

Chris was waiting for a texted response from Bruce about the cat when Sierra stopped to pet him. “He’s beautiful.”

“Did you tell him that he forgot his cat?” Helen asked as Sierra picked Darn It up from her lap.

Purring, the Siamese rubbed his head under Sierra’s chin.

Chris answered Helen’s question with a nod of his head. “He says he doesn’t have a cat.” He ate a forkful of the pie.

“What does that mean? We all saw Bruce carry that cat into the courthouse.”

“But Bruce doesn’t own a cat.”

“Then who does the cat belong to?”

“Me now.” Sierra scratched the feline behind his ears. “What’s his name?”

Upon hearing the ding signaling a text, Chris read Bruce’s answer. “Bruce says his name is—” He paused to re-read the text.

“What’s his name?” Sierra asked.

Chris chuckled. “Darn It.”

“Excuse me.” Helen leaned in closer. “What did you say was his name?”

“Darn It.” Chris held out his phone for her to read the message. “His name is Darn It.”

“Okay, Darn It,” Sierra said, “time for me to introduce you to my friends.” Before her mother could object, she sashayed into the living room with Darn It in her arms.

In disbelief, Helen asked, “Did that really just happen?”

“Be thankful. The last pet one of my kids talked me into was a two-thousand-pound horse named Tiny.”

Once everyone stuff with good food, things quieted down. Under the table, Sterling was resting his head on Chris’s foot. Behind them, Doris and Reverend Ruth helped Abby clean up the kitchen.

With time to relax, a question in the back of Chris’s mind worked its way to the forefront. “Who did shoot O’Donnell?”

“Couldn’t have been Nolan,” Helen said. “Kara alibied him.”

“Which means she has an alibi because she was vandalizing Nolan’s car,” Chris said.

“Why would Kara have wanted to kill Bishop O’Donnell?” Reverend Ruth asked while stacking the empty casserole dishes on the table.

“The killer shot up the office,” Doris said. “A total of seven shots had been fired. Kirk believed that indicated he wasn’t necessarily targeting one man.”

“Or the perp wasn’t an experienced shooter,” Chris said.

“When I first started out in police work,” Helen said, “I answered a call for shots fired. A woman woke up to find a burglar in her bedroom. She grabbed her husband’s gun and fired six rounds at the guy who was supposedly only fifteen feet away. She took out the windows, pictures, and television, but totally missed the intruder.”

“Did you catch him?” Abby asked.

“He fell of the porch and broke his leg while trying to escape,” Helen said.

“Then it’s possible that Bishop O’Donnell wasn’t the intended target,” Reverend Ruth said.

Helen ticked off the details of the case on her fingers. “Bishop O’Donnell opened the door. It was dark. The outdoor light didn’t work. There was no way the shooter could have seen who he hit.”

“The bishop was so arrogant, I’m surprised he lowered himself to open the door,” Reverend Ruth said. “That’s something he’d have a minion do for him.”

“If that’s the case, why did he answer it?” Chris asked.

Everyone looked to each other for the answer.

“The only ones who can answer that is Liz the Lizard who’s a liar, or Rusty the other trustee,” Doris said. “After the murder, Rusty wanted nothing to do with organized religion. The last time I talked to him, he was watching streamed worship services on his phone.”

“Do you blame him?” Reverend Ruth said.

“Well, it couldn’t have been Duane because Kara had the truck and the shooter drove a truck,” Abby McCall said in a firm tone.

“How do we know that?” Chris asked.

Again, there was silence while everyone waited for someone with an answer to respond.

“Liz said…” Doris said before stopping.

“Officially, Liz has zero credibility. The facts have proven that she states what benefits her agenda. That leaves Reverend Holmes—”

“Who’s dead,” Abby said.

“We still have his witness statement in the case file,” Helen said while digging her computer tablet out of her purse.

“And Rusty,” Chris said. “Let’s see what Rusty said in his statement. Did anyone actually see that the suspect was driving a truck?”

Helen logged into the police’s secure website on her tablet and accessed the case file. She scrolled through the reports until she found Rusty Patton’s statement.

“What does it say?” Doris asked.

“It says he could not describe the ‘car,’” Helen said. “He could have used that word in the generic sense.” She slid her finger across the tablet to check another statement. “Reverend Holmes said in his statement that it was a truck.”

“Which confirms Liz’s statement,” Chris said.

“Are you going back to trying to frame Duane for this?” Abby placed a hand on her hip. “You’re saying that whoever did it wanted to kill all of them and the only one who got into a fight with all of them was Duane.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m thinking the killer had a specific target but didn’t see who opened that door.”

“He shot up the office in hopes of hitting his target,” Helen said while punching a number into her phone. “I’m going to call Rusty Patton to ask him what type of vehicle he saw.”

“If the shooter succeeded in hitting all four people in that office, then it would have been more difficult for the police to determine which of them was the intended victim,” Chris said.

“Who do you think was the target?” Doris asked Chris with a knowing smile.

He flashed her a coy grin. Helen stepped out of the room to talk to Rusty Patton.

“He’s got a suspect in mind,” Reverend Ruth told Doris.

Abby slung a dish towel over her shoulder and crossed her arms. “It’d better not be Duane.”

A moment later, Helen returned. With a chuckle, she tossed the phone onto the table. “Rusty says he was eating carpet too much to get a good description of the car. But before the bullets started flying, he saw enough of the outline of it to be able to say with certainty that it was a sedan.”

“Which means Reverend Holmes lied when he stated that the shooter drove a truck,” Chris said.

“Why would he lie?” Ruth asked.

“His account confirms Liz’s statement,” Helen said. “If two out of three witnesses—”

“Liz needed to discredit Duane because he threatened to reveal her dirty tricks,” Chris said. “Holmes could have lied in his statement because Liz bullied him into it or,” a grin came to his lips, “the reverend lied for his own personal reasons.”

The next morning, Rose Marie Holmes was late for her water aerobics class when she opened the door to her cozy home to discover Helen and Chris on her doorstep.

“Good morning, Ms. Holmes,” Chris greeted her. “How are you this morning?”

Rose Marie looked confused for only a moment before inviting them inside. “I’m late, but I guess I can skip my exercise class today to spend time with our local law enforcement.” She showed them into a spacious living room furnished in white.

“The gym. Cruises,” Chris said. “You do keep busy, Ms. Holmes.”

“I’ve been blessed with a good life.” Rose Marie eyed Helen when she took a folder and notepad from her valise.

“We were wondering why you went to the arraignment yesterday?” Chris asked.

“Same as everyone. Curiosity. My late husband Truman was there the night that Bishop O’Donnell got gunned down.” She uttered a sigh. “That was what killed him.”

“That was?” Helen said.

“Stress. Trauma.” Rose Marie shrugged her shoulders. “He wasn’t the same after that night.”

“Three weeks later he died,” Chris said.

“Yes.” Rose Marie wiped one of her eyes. “In his sleep. Thank you, God. He didn’t suffer.”

“But he did suffer.” Helen opened the folder. “According to your statement at the time, he’d been sick for months, but refused to see a doctor.”

Rose Marie stared at the file in Helen’s lap. “Ask anyone. Truman did not trust doctors.”

“Yes,” Chris said with a nod of his head, “we did talk to quite a few of your late husband’s friends and associates. They all said the same thing. Your husband hated doctors. He believed that God healed all illnesses if it was His will. He practically thought it was a sin to get medical care.”

Rose Marie sighed with relief.

“They also told us that he was extremely controlling,” Chris said. “He told you how to dress and what to do and where to go. He even told you what to cook for dinner.”

“I could never live like that,” Helen said. “You didn’t even travel out of the state until after your husband had passed.”

“Now look at you. Cruise every year. Going out with friends. What was it you told my mother yesterday?” Chris tapped his lips. “Truman dying was the nicest thing he’d ever done for you.”

“I loved my husband,” Rose Marie said. “I was only eighteen years old when I married him. He was thirty and set in his ways. I was too young and naïve. I didn’t realize how unhealthy our relationship was until it was too late.”

“By then you were trapped,” Helen said. “With no job experience or even a high school diploma, you had no way out.”

“Then you met Nolan,” Chris said. “He was a bad boy, and you’d never had a bad boy.”

“This is exactly what I was afraid of when I heard that McCall girl on the stand yesterday.” Rose Marie wagged a finger at them. “She was either lying or mistaken. Nolan’s mother was a trustee at the church where my husband was preaching. I knew him to say hello. That was it. I was not at Panera Bread that night. I was not having dinner with Nolan Jennings. I was home alone reading a book.”

“Kara McCall insists she saw the two of you in a booth together,” Helen said, “and that you were arguing.”

“Since Kara attended the same church,” Chris said, “she knew both of you well enough to recognize you.”

“Then she’s lying!” Rose Marie said.

“Maybe she is.” Chris glanced at Helen. “At this point, there’s no way to prove they were having dinner together, is there?”

Helen shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

Chris stood.

With a sigh, Rose Marie pushed herself up from the chair.

“Except…” Chris’s voice trailed off as he lowered himself back onto the sofa.

She retook her seat. “Except?”

“Except for the jaguar you bought for him,” Chris said with an innocent grin.

While Rose Marie stammered, Helen opened the folder and held out a sheet of paper to her. “The month before Bishop O’Donnell was killed, you withdrew fifty thousand dollars from your joint savings account. It’s here in your financial records, which we got with a warrant.”

“That was approximately the same time that Nolan started driving a jag,” Chris said. “Everyone assumed he’d bought it with his drug money and he did nothing to discourage that assumption.”

“We went back to the jag’s previous owner,” Helen said. “He sold the car to a woman who had found it online. While you did pay for it with a cashier’s check, you did exchange emails with him and you did use your own email address. That’s what led us back to you.”

“You tried to keep your husband from finding out by having the car and the insurance registered in your own name alone,” Chris said. “But the bank did notified him about you withdrawing the money from your joint retirement account.”

Rose Marie looked down at her hands.

“Of course, as controlling as the reverend was,” Chris said, “he was furious when he found out about the withdrawal and confronted you.”

“Nolan was a seventeen-year-old drug dealer,” Helen said. “He’s been nothing but trouble for everyone who ever got mixed up with him. Why would a respectable woman like you—”

“Because he was trouble, that’s why,” Rose Marie said. “He made me feel alive! The only way he would spend time with an old crow like me was if I bought him things. Money for his drugs. iPods. Toys. He found that jag online. If I didn’t find some way to buy it for him, then he wasn’t going to see me anymore. I had to buy it. So I took the money out of our account and I got it. Yes, it was degrading having to give Nolan things to get him to be with me, but don’t you think I deserved some happiness?”

“Maybe,” Chris said, “but that doesn’t justify murder.”

“You can’t prove I killed Truman.”

“If you poisoned him, traces of it can still be found in his corpse,” Helen said. “We can get a court order to exhume his grave.”

Rose Marie stared at Helen.

“Your husband served in the Vietnam War, didn’t he?” Chris asked.

“Yes, what does that—”

“He was issued a service weapon,” Chris said. “The weapon used to shoot up the church was a sixty-year-old M1911 pistol—standard issue until the 1980s. Out of the four people meeting that night, Reverend Holmes was the only one who had been in the military during the time period that the M1911 had been issued. And if he’d kept his service weapon, then that would have given you access to it.”

“What were you and Nolan arguing about that night?” Helen asked. “Did your husband order you to get the car back and Nolan refused?”

“Did the reverend threaten to expose your affair with a seventeen-year-old drug dealer?” Chris asked. “Is that why you felt you had to kill him? To keep him quiet about your relationship with Nolan?”

She leveled her gaze on them. “I didn’t ask Nolan to give me back the car. That isn’t why we were arguing. I had asked him if one of his drug dealing buddies could take care of Truman for me.” She blinked. “He refused. I mean, I gave him a jag. But he told me he couldn’t have a minister killed. That would have been wrong.” She swallowed. “Truman was my problem. If I had to get rid of him, I had to do it myself.”

“With the outside light broken, it was too dark for you to see who’d opened the door,” Chris said. “So you unloaded the gun—banking on killing your husband.”

“Bishop O’Donnell never opened doors,” Rose Marie said. “That pompous ass never did anything for himself. And if it was Liz who had opened it, then I would have been doing everyone a favor. She’s a back-stabbing worm.” She let out a hollow laugh. “After all that, Truman didn’t even get a scratch.”

“But he recognized your car,” he said.

Rose Marie’s eyes grew wide.

“He cared enough about you to try to get the police off the trail,” Chris said. “He stated that it was a truck that pulled up to the church. Liz Jennings confirmed the statement by implicating Duane McCall. But Rusty Patton, the other trustee and treasurer, he isn’t a liar. He said in his statement that he looked out the window before the shooting started and he saw a sedan, and you drove a white sedan. Rusty had no reason to lie.”

Rose Marie’s hands shook in her lap.

“What did your husband do when he got home?” Helen asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“He never hurt me physically,” Rose Marie said. “He told me that I was a sick woman. That I needed a psychiatrist.” She sighed. “It all would have been so much easier if he had just opened the door and at least one of my bullets had hit him.” She dropped her eyes to her hands in her lap. “Maybe I should have gone to the gun range and practiced a few times before I tried to shoot him. It’s just they were meeting at the church that night. Duane McCall had called Truman, and they got into a big fight. Everyone was mad and upset. It was the perfect time to do it. But instead I had killed Bishop O’Donnell.” She shrugged. “No big loss there. It isn’t like that pompous SOB was really a holy man.” Her upper lip curled into a snarl. “They were all a bunch of hypocrites.”

There was a long silence during which Rose Marie stared at her hands.

Finally, Chris sighed. “Our culture has come to assume that Christians are supposed to be perfect—or that we think we are—when really, it’s the opposite. We study the Bible because we’re sinners and we want to learn how to fight the sin in our own lives and the surrounding temptation.”

“If we were perfect, we wouldn’t need to go to church,” Helen said with a slight grin.

“We could stay home and bask in our sainthood.” Chris frowned. “But then we’d have to come up with another reason to go out for Sunday brunch.”

“Truman was headed for hell long before Bishop O’Donnell called him out of retirement.” With a heavy sigh, Rose Marie rolled of her eyes. “He always had to make everything so difficult. You have no idea how much arsenic I put in his food before he finally did me a favor and passed away.”

Helen rose to her feet. “Rose Marie Truman, we’re arresting you for the murder of Bishop Lawrence O’Donnell and Reverend Truman Holmes.” She recited her rights to the late reverend’s widow while cuffing her hands behind her back.

“You have no idea how stingy that man was,” Rose Marie Holmes told Chris as they led her outside. “Like, I’d always wanted a pet. I needed something soft and loving since Truman was so hard and cold-hearted. For thirty years, I asked him for a kitten. But did he ever let me have one? Nope!”

The End

KILLING BID

A MAC FARADAY MYSTERY SHORT

“Tell me again why you insisted on bringing him?” Mac Faraday asked Archie Monday while handing a blue leather clutch bag back to an unhappy looking woman.

He didn’t think it was possible for the woman to look any more displeased; but, when her manicured fingertips came in contract with dog drool, she managed an even deeper frown, disgust mixed with wrath.

“I told you what he did to my iPad,” he told the petite and pretty blonde who had dragged him and his wayward dog away from their secure home on Deep Creek Lake, for a day of shopping, which the multi-millionaire hated.

From the end of his leash, Gnarly, the German shepherd, cocked his head while gazing up at his master as if to ask the same thing about him. If it hadn’t been for Mac’s yelling, no one would have spotted the dog snatching the bag from the woman irresponsible enough to have left it unattended while looking over the jewelry on display at the estate auction.

“The trainer had said it would be good for him,” Archie replied with one of those sighs that said she was tired of repeatedly explaining her reasoning for bringing the anti-social hundred-pound shepherd with a talent for getting into trouble.

Neither the man nor his beast wanted to be there.

It was a woman thing.

Archie Monday and her friend Catherine Fleming had somehow coerced “the men”, Mac Faraday and Catherine’s husband Ben Fleming, Garrett County, Maryland’s prosecuting attorney, into attending the estate auction of Celeste Taylor, the legendary actress of Broadway and the Golden Age of movies turned socialite turned recluse.

The auction was by invitation only. Since Mac Faraday was the son, even if it was illegitimate, of mystery novelist Robin Spencer, one of Celeste Taylor’s friends, then he had garnered an invitation. He would have tossed out if it weren’t for Archie Monday, his late mother’s editor and research assistant, intercepting it.

“Celeste Taylor knew all of the greats and near greats in both Hollywood and New York,” Archie confided in a whisper while jerking on Gnarly’s leash when he threatened to stick his nose into a fat man’s pocket. “There was even talk of her being the mistress of Le Chat.”

“Who’s Le Chat?” Mac asked.

Archie and Catherine stopped to gaze at a life-sized oil painting of the strikingly beautiful actress in her youth. She was clad in an ornate ruby red gown with thick shoulder pads. A ruby tiara covered the top of her head. The gown hugged every delicious curve of her voluptuous body. Her red hair fell in one wave that covered up one eye and draped across her shoulder.

The two women sighed with adoration.

Ben chose to answer Mac’s question. “Le Chat was a legendary, and most likely fictional, cat burglar of the rich and famous.”

“Not according to what I heard,” Catherine countered her husband. “I worked my way through college working at Tiffany’s in DC. The manager told me that Le Chat was for real back in the late fifties through mid-seventies. The best in jewelry and art. They said he even stole a Renoir from the National Museum of Art in Washington after a gala. He only stole from the very rich and the crème of high society. It got so that having your jewelry stolen by Le Chat was like a status symbol.”

“In other words,” Ben said, “he only robbed those on the A-list. If he passed you by, then socially you were on the out.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” Mac said.

Ben chuckled. “Spoken like a true man of common sense.”

“Why did they think Celeste Taylor was connected to Le Chat?” Mac asked Catherine.

“Totally circumstantial,” she replied. “An insurance investigator had noticed that the burglaries occurred after huge social events. Celeste was at each one of these events. At the time she was said to be dating a mysterious French businessman. They tried to identify him, but couldn’t catch him and she refused to give him up.”

“How romantic,” Archie said.

Strolling behind the two women being dragged by the shepherd through the mansion with all of the late celebrity’s wares on display, Mac cast a look in Ben’s direction. The lawyer rolled his eyes.

“Oh, you should read Celeste Taylor’s autobiography,” Catherine grasped Archie’s arm. “She had such a fascinating life. She started out as a dancer. Within less than a couple of years, she was starring on Broadway. From there to Hollywood to become a movie star. Falls in love and marries a millionaire and has a baby, only to lose her husband to a car accident before the bloom has even left the rose. Makes a big comeback—high society, romance with a mysterious stranger sought by Interpol, only to have him disappear leaving her with nothing but a single red rose on his pillow before disappearing into the night.”

“Didn’t I see that in a movie once?” Mac asked.

“Wasn’t that the ending of a Celeste Taylor movie that we saw on the golden oldies?” Archie agreed.

“I’m sure you’re both mistaken,” Catherine said. “We really need to check out the jewelry.”

“Of course, we do,” Ben said, “we can’t not check out the jewelry.”

An hour from Deep Creek Lake, the mountaintop estate overlooked a valley in the Virginian countryside. In the early spring, the weather had broken. It was warm enough for the auction personnel to open the doors and windows of the century-old colonial mansion to allow a breeze to sweep through the rooms filled with its late owner’s possessions.

The temporary parking lot that had been set up on the front yard was made up of luxury cars and SUV’s the size of military tanks.

Catherine, who Mac had never seen out of fashion, donned a lilac hat that resembled a style he had seen Princess Kate wearing. With her classical blond beauty, sense of style, and her husband’s financial and social connections as Garrett County’s prosecutor, she had everything necessary to be an American princess.

Archie, too, donned a bonnet on her head, which Mac was not pleased to see covering up her pixie blond hair.

Like animals wanting to impress the rest of the herd with their power or virility, the other guests at the estate sale were dressed in fine spring wear. While gawking and examining Celeste Taylor’s collection of extravagant jewelry, they would make noises ranging from impressed to disappointed when informed that much of it was imitation.

“If Celeste had been married to a millionaire and was a celebrated actress, how did she die broke?” Mac asked Ben Fleming, who was peering at a statue that resembled the Thinker, after having been set fire to. Mac couldn’t tell if he was admiring it or curious about how it came to look like that.

“She didn’t work for the last thirty years of her life,” Ben answered. “I don’t know the particulars of her finances, but millions of dollars only goes so far when it’s all going out, but nothing is coming in. You know that. Even having inherited two-hundred and seventy million dollars, if you weren’t so smart investing it, if it just sat there for you to live off of, it wouldn’t last very long.”

“Wouldn’t she have an advisor to suggest investments?” Mac asked, “like I have?”

“Maybe her advisor isn’t as smart as yours,” Ben replied. “It’s not uncommon for rich people, very wealthy and smart people, to have huge chunks, if not all, of their millions stolen by dishonest so-called investment counselors.”

“You’re not going to believe what I just heard.” Catherine came rushing up to clasp her husband’s elbow. “All of Celeste Taylor’s jewelry is fake.”

“Including the Blue Starburst Diamond.” Archie came up on Mac’s other side.

“What’s the Blue Starburst Diamond?” Mac asked.

“Don’t you follow any of the society pages?” Catherine asked him.

“Nope.”

“The Blue Starburst Diamond was given to Celeste Taylor as an engagement ring from her late and only husband,” Archie said. “It was a seven carat blue diamond with a white starburst in the center. Extremely rare. There’s only one like it in the whole world.”

“You certainly weren’t expecting to buy it, were you?” Ben sounded worried when he asked Catherine.

“I only wanted to see it,” Catherine said. “But they just announced that it was discovered that what Celeste’s daughter thought was the diamond was really a fake. Turns out, Celeste has been selling off her jewels and artwork for years and replacing it with fakes.”

“That’s why they’re having this auction,” Archie said. “The estate is broke.”

Further conversation was cut off when Gnarly dragged Archie off toward the open doorway leading to the dining room.

“You’re invitation, sir?” a tall intimidating man in a black suit stopped Mac. Holding out his hand, he demanded to see his invitation.

“Why didn’t you ask them?” Mac demanded to know while taking his invitation out of his inner breast pocket.

The man refused to take his eyes off Mac. “Because I’m asking you.” He snatched the invitation from Mac’s hand and read the front cover. “Your name, sir.”

“Mac Faraday. Yours?”

“Faraday?” A note of congeniality crept into his tone. “As in Robin Spencer’s son Faraday?”

“The very same.” Mac took back the invitation. “And you are …”

“Frederick. The butler here. It is my job to keep out the riff-raff who may only be seeking to gawk at Ms. Taylor’s treasures. I worked for her for thirty years.”

“You must have been close,” Mac said with sympathy.

“Very.”

“Mac! He-lp me pl-le-ee-ze!” Archie cried from within the interior of the house.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mac muttered while dashing around the towering man and running in the direction of Archie’s call. He found her attached to the end of the leash with a hundred pounds of fur at the other end dragging her from room to room. Mac weaved through the crowd to get to her side.

“I see what he’s tailing.” She dared to let go of the leash with one hand to point a finger up ahead.

Mac had to search the throng of people ahead of them before he could see the object that had captured Gnarly’s attention. On what appeared to be a mound of yellow daisies, the blue bird bounced and beebopped on top of woman’s head.

Gnarly was on the hunt.

“Gnarly,” Mac jerked on the leash, “leave the bird alone.”

Still on the trail of the blue bird, the black and tan dog dragged them across the parlor to a row of mannequins set in front of a red cherry china hutch.

“Oh, my!” Archie uttered when Gnarly halted behind the woman who suddenly stopped to stare at a white gown encrusted with diamonds. They all stopped so fast that she and Mac collided and almost knocked over the mannequin.

His eye on the bird, Gnarly barked at the woman in the hat.

Annoyed by the barking dog, several of the patrons glared at the couple trying to shush the dog.

The gowns on three mannequins was causing as much of a ruckus as the barking dog. One gown was red, the other was blue, and the middle was white mixed with other brilliant sparkling colors. The lights around the mannequins caught and sparked off of the jewels that did not appear to have a uniform size or shape.

All three gowns were more than beaded. Each of the gowns was ornamented in jewels. The red in what appeared to be rubies. The blue one in sapphires, the white gown in the center was done up in diamonds, emeralds, topaz, and a variety of other jewel colors. The sign in front of the white gown described it as the showcase costume worn by Celeste Taylor during her run on Broadway in the mid-sixties. She had kept the gown, which was designed personally for her by a top designer.

“Gorgeous,” Archie said in awe.

Every guest passing by stopped to gaze upon the gowns with awe while the dog at his master’s feet whined and simpered at Mac while casting longing looks at the bird lady as if to say, “I want that bird. Can you get it for me please?”

“Gnarly, quiet,” Mac ordered the dog while shooting embarrassed grins at the gathering crowd of shoppers.

“Your dog has good taste,” said an elderly lady who was making no pretense of admiring the red gown.

“Yes, they are beautiful,” a young woman with her hair done up in a twist and a serious expression on her face said. “Unfortunately, the gems on these gowns are very good imitations. They are worthless. However, they are valuable in that Celeste wore them on Broadway in her play Sparkle for several years.”

“Can you imagine how valuable these gowns would be if the jewels were real diamonds?” Archie asked Mac.

“They do look very real,” the business woman explained. “But I assure you, they’re fake, as is most of Celeste Taylor’s jewelry and artwork, I’m afraid.” She offered her hand to Mac. “Brenda Collins. I’m the appraiser hired by the estate to assess Ms. Taylor’s assets.” She glanced down at Gnarly who was crying loudly. “Is something wrong with your dog?”

“Yes,” Mac answered.

“Mac, can’t you make him stop?” Archie begged.

“He listens to you more than he does me.” Mac snapped, “Gnarly, shut up. Can’t you see it’s a fake bird?”

As if to beg for his master to get the bird for him, the German shepherd gazed first at the bird, and then at Mac and then back at the bird lady a few feet away. He uttered a whimper from the pit of his stomach that seemed to go on forever.

“I’m not getting that bird for you,” Mac said. “So just forget it.”

Gnarly hung his head.

“Let’s get out of here,” Archie suggested. “Maybe if we get out of the bird’s sight it will get out of his mind.”

They dragged Gnarly into the living room where they found Catherine and Ben. She rushed up to them with two paddles that had numbers painted on the flat surfaces. “Okay, we’re all registered.” She thrust one of the paddles into Mac’s free hand. Seeing an apprehensive expression cross his face, she asked, “Have you ever bid at an auction before?”

“No.”

“It’s easy,” Ben explained. “If you see something you want, you hold up the paddle so the auctioneer can see your number and accept the bid. You don’t even have to say anything. Just hold up the paddle.”

“I don’t see anything I want to bid on.” Mac saw that his paddle was number 702.

“Gnarly does.” Archie pointed at the dog staring at the blue bird dancing on top of the head of its owner going into the room where the auction was being held.

The living room of the mansion had been cleared out and rows of chairs set up in front of a desk and riser for the auctioneer and other people running the auction. At a small desk by the edge of the stage, a dark haired man with silver at his temples was on a phone.

The two couples found four seats together toward the back of the room in order to keep Gnarly down and quiet.

Ben explained about the man on the phone. “They’re accepting phone-in bids. The buyer is on the phone until his item comes up. He casts his bid via the phone operator.”

“How do they know what’s here?” Mac wanted to know.

Catherine answered, “Everything was photographed and listed online. It had the catalog number and starting bid.” Shushing them, she noted that the seats were filling up and the audience was becoming quiet as the auctioneer approached the stage.

Noticing that she clutched the second paddle and not Ben, Mac wondered if she had seen something listed online that she had her eye on.

On the other side of the stage set-up, a woman dressed in a pant suit with her red hair twisted up in a bun was eyeing the crowd while conferring with a man clutching a clipboard. Noticing a resemblance between her and Celeste Taylor, Mac wondered if she was the unfortunate heir. He considered his suspicion confirmed when he noticed her chewing on a thumbnail while looking anxiously at the crowd taking their seats.

Mac imagined how many family heirlooms to which she had formed an emotional attachment had been put up for auction in order to settle the estate.

For a man who doesn’t like shopping, Mac found the auction more enjoyable than a shopping trip. Instead of trudging among merchandise, items were brought to the front of the stage, with a couple of minutes for potential buyers to inspect each treasure before returning to their seat in order to allow the bidding to start.

As Mac had guessed, Catherine did have her eye on a set of Wedgewood Christmas herringbone china with gold trim that had once belonged to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. While his wife bid over a thousand dollars against a young woman at the front of the audience, Ben was more interested in a man in a suit up toward the front studying the catalog and the man on the phone at the desk.

Mac didn’t think he could be so laid-back about writing a check for over a thousand dollars for a bunch of old plates, even if they were trimmed in real gold and had once belonged to a former first lady.

Plates are plates. You eat off them. At over a hundred years old, they’re old plates to boot. Who in their right mind pays over a thousand dollars for used plates?

Archie was oohing and ahhing over each item as it went pass. But, when Mac asked if she wanted him to bid on something for her, she would decline. Such was Archie. While she enjoyed the finer things in life, he had found that she was not a big shopper, which was one of the things he liked about her.

Appearing to be bored with the affair, Gnarly fell asleep on top of Mac’s feet at the end of the row next to the aisle … until the bird lady entered the room.

As the bird lady passed the sleeping dog, he awoke with a start and sat up.

At this time, the mannequin donning the diamond rhinestones was brought up to the stage.

The auctioneer announced into the mike, “We now have Celeste Taylor’s diamond gown worn onstage in the wedding scene in Sparkle when she appeared on Broadway.” He went on to read the catalog number which was drowned out by Gnarly’s barking at the blue bird in the chair in front of him.

The man on the phone covered one ear while listening with the other.

The man in the suit in the front row was sitting at attention. While shooting a glance back at them to settle the dog threatening to jump up to snag the fake feathered fowl, he thrust his paddle up in the air.

“We have a bid of five thousand dollars,” the auctioneer announced. “Do we have fifty-five hundred?”

“Gnarly, quiet,” Mac hissed while jerking on the leash.

Crying, Gnarly laid down with his eyes on the hat up above him.

When the man on the phone raised the bid to fifty-five hundred, the man in the front seat countered with six thousand, to which the call in bidder upped it to seven thousand.

Ben suddenly found things interesting.

Gnarly refused to be thwarted in his capture of the bird. With his eyes on the prey, he continued to cry. His ribs quivered in his frustration at it being so close while he was unable to touch it. It danced in front of him every time the woman turned her head to make him even more anxious.

Thinking that Gnarly’s anxiety would be eased if he was unable to see it, Mac lifted the paddle to block the dog’s view of it.

“We have a bid of twelve thousand from number seven-oh-two.”

Instead of quieting down, Gnarly stepped over to look around the paddle to continue gazing up at the bird. Letting out a long painful whine, he pawed at the back of the Bird Woman’s chair.

The woman turned her head to cast a perturbed glance at the dog.

While Catherine tried to pretend not to be with the party with the crying dog, Archie and Ben glanced around to see who had joined in the bidding.

Casting an angry glance at the new bidder behind him, the man in the front row raised the bid another thousand, to which the phone in bidder raised it to fifteen thousand.

Meanwhile, Gnarly retaliated to Mac’s lack of action in getting the bird for him by trying to climb into his lap. In the struggle, Mac raised up his hand holding the paddle.

“Seventeen thousand!” the auctioneer declared. “Seven-oh-two has bid seventeen thousand.”

The phone in bidder raised the price to eighteen-thousand.

The bidder in the front row raised it to nineteen-thousand.

While Gnarly cried out insistently at the blue bird mocking him by showing no intimidation, the two bidders battled it out until the price went up to twenty-five thousand.

“Since when did you become a fashion critic?” Mac hissed at the dog. Now the bird hat was annoying him as much as it did Gnarly.

At twenty-nine thousand dollars, the bidder in the front seat dropped out.

While the auctioneer waited, it went once, it went twice, and Mac raised his paddle to flip the hat off the woman’s head onto the floor in the aisle in front of Gnarly, who pounced on the bird that had been torturing him.

“We have thirty thousand from number seven-oh-two!”

Ben and Archie followed the tip of the auctioneer’s fingertip to Mac.

She grabbed the paddle out of his hand and checked the number painted on it. “You’re number seven-oh-two.”

But Mac had other matters to contend to.

With the blue bird in his grasp, Gnarly ripped it from the hat and was trying to eat it.

With the bird lady screaming bloody murder, Mac grabbed Gnarly in a head lock and extracted the mangled Styrofoam and feathered creature from his jaws to hand them back to its owner. “I’m sorry about your hat. Maybe you can fix it with some glue.”

“Peasants!” She grabbed her hat and bird and stormed out.

“Do we have thirty-one thousand for Celeste Taylor’s wedding gown worn in Sparkle?” the auctioneer was asking.

“You just bid thirty thousand for that dress!” Ben laughed. “’You’ve been bidding on it and you didn’t even know it.”

“Going twice!”

Mac felt the blood drain from his face. He froze like a statue in his seat. “Don’t anybody move,” he whispered. “Don’t even breath.”

Holding his breath, he prayed that one of the other two bidders would cough up another thousand, hundred, ten dollars, dime to make it all go away so that he could have a good laugh about his blunder on the way home.

Judging by the expression of the bidder eyeing him from the front row, it wasn’t going to happen.

Mac’s only hope was the phone-in bidder. Desperate, he turned to the man on the phone. Frederick was handing a coffee mug to the operator. With a glance in Mac’s direction, he hung up the phone before taking a sip of his coffee.

“Going thrice!” The auctioneer announced in a loud voice while pointing across the room at Mac. “Sold to the man with the bird dog!”

“I saw that you didn’t really mean to bid,” Millicent Taylor, the woman in the pant suit who had been conferring with her lawyer told Mac as he wrote out the check for thirty thousand dollars to complete his purchase of the rhinestone gown.

“I’m a man, I can take it.” Mac handed her the check.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “If there was anything—” She turned to the man who she had been conferring with while watching the bidding. “Maybe—” She turned back to Mac. “This is my mother’s attorney, Reginald Patterson.” She turned back to her lawyer. “Everyone saw that it was a mistake …”

“Millicent, if you take back items then you aren’t going to make enough money to get the estate out of the red.” He flashed his bright white teeth at Mac. “I’m sure, being a businessman, Mr. Faraday, you understand.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Mac didn’t want to admit that he felt sorrier for her selling her belongings. “Maybe my daughter will wear it when she meets some nice man, he passes a background check, and I allow him to get close enough to my daughter for them to get married.”

“Maybe,” Reginald interjected before Mac could turn away. “Privately, I could take that gown off your hands. Of course, you won’t make back all of your money. I knew Celeste for years and am sorry to say that it was business for us so much that I neglected to get anything to remember her by.”

“You want her dress?” Mac looked him up and down.

“Those gowns belong in a museum,” he said. “The Smithsonian. They’re a part of Americana.”

“If we didn’t need the money so bad to pay Mom’s debts, that’s where I would send them,” Millicent said with teary eyes.

“Give me a call.” Patterson handed Mac his business card. “We’ll work something out.”

As disgusted and embarrass as Mac was, his companions were laughing it up a few paces away. His tail high up in the air, wagging away, Gnarly seemed to be enjoying the joke as much as they were.

The man from the front row made a “psst” noise in Mac’s ear. “Hey, buddy.” He grasped his elbow. “How much do you want for it?”

Still reeling after paying thirty thousand dollars for a woman’s gown, Mac had to wrap his mind around being offered money to resale it.

Wait a minute, Mac. I bought it for thirty thousand, even if by accident. That means I need to sell it for more in order to make a profit. Ask for more than thirty thousand.

Meanwhile, the man in the suit thrust a business card in Mac’s hand. “I might be able to get my client to go up to forty thou.”

The card read Eli Harris. The address was New York, New York. Seeing that his title was Investment Counselor, Mac took an instant dislike to him.

This dude came all the way from New York to buy a dress?

“Would you take forty for it?” He already had his cell phone up against his ear.

Before Mac could say yes or no, the investment counselor was talking away, explaining that he was talking to the wealthy fan of Celeste Taylor who would give anything for the Sparkle Wedding Gown and stepped away.

Gee, that’s a ten thousand dollar profit in less than thirty minutes. That was easy.

Mac was calculating how many thousand it was per ten minutes when Catherine grabbed him from behind by the upper arm and hissed in his ear. “I don’t believe it! I really don’t believe it!”

“Believe what?” Mac glanced over his shoulder at where Archie and Ben were studying the jewels sown and glued onto the bodice of the gown. They were looking in disbelief at Catherine whose face was pale. “What?”

“Those aren’t rhinestones. They’re diamonds. Every single stinking one of those is real.”

“Are you sure?” Mac asked.

“The appraiser told us that they were fake,” Archie said.

“I’ve worked with gemstones for over ten years before I got married. I know jewels,” Catherine’s voice rose in volume while pointing at the gown. “That gown is covered in real diamonds. It’s got to be worth at least a half a million dollars—if not a million.”

“Stop the auction!” Millicent Taylor suddenly screamed. She threw out both of her arms while yelling at the top of her voice. “Don’t sell anything else!” She turned to the lawyer at the desk. His mouth was hanging open. “Give everyone back their money until we get another appraiser to examine everything. I knew there was something funny going on. Mom insisted that I was going to be really pleasantly surprised with the estate that she was leaving me—this is not what I expected it to be. That woman tried to rob me!”

She looked beyond Mac and pointed her finger. “Someone grab her!”

The doors clanged as Brenda Collins ran from the auction room.

Mac and Gnarly gave chase through the crowd. In the hallway, Mac heard Gnarly barking while running up the stairs to the second floor of the mansion. At the top of the stairs, Mac heard a door slam. Gnarly was jumping on what appeared to be a bedroom door at the end of the hall.

Before he could reach the dog, Mac heard a woman’s scream, followed by a chorus of screams from the guests outside as the body of the appraiser tumbled over the verandah railing to land in the courtyard below.

He threw open the door. Gnarly raced out and jumped up to place his paws on top of the bannister. Below, they saw the body of Brenda Collins sprawled out in a flower bed.

Archie and Ben knelt next to her body before looking up at Mac. One of the security guards was standing behind them while calling emergency on his radio.

“What happened?” Ben called up to him.

“It wasn’t me,” Mac said before recalling that Gnarly was scratching at the bedroom door. Behind him, he saw that the verandah door leading into the bedroom was open. The glass was broken in the window frames. Jewelry boxes and cases were scattered around the room. Doors hung open and empty drawers were pulled out.

Gnarly sniffed the front of a jewel case and lowered his snout to the floor before trotting out into the hallway.

Sounding the alarm, Mac ran out onto the verandah and yelled over the side down to Ben and Archie. “It’s a robbery! There’s a bunch of empty jewelry cases up here and each one is empty.”

“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 spotlight 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 stop 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.”

“In front of reporters,” Eli said with a smile.

“Looks like you’ve redeemed yourself,” Mac said.

“Couldn’t have done it without your help, Mac.” Eli gripped Mac’s hand.

“You were the one who didn’t give up the trail when it got cold,” Mac said. “It was fresh again when I picked it up.”

“Are you giving back everything your mother stole?” Catherine asked Millicent.

“Only the famous pieces of art that she had stolen from museums,” Millicent said. “As for the jewels, she had broken all of them down. So I’m going to lend the gowns to the Smithsonian.”

“Those gowns are pieces of art.” Catherine turned to Mac, “Too bad that you don’t get to keep the diamond gown.”

“It isn’t my color,” Mac said.

“Did you notice how heavy that thing was?” Archie said. “It has to weigh at least twenty-five pounds.”

“All in precious stones,” Catherine gushed. “Now that is a dress to die for.”

The End

BEAUTY TO DIE FOR

A LOVERS IN CRIME MYSTERY SHORT

Chester, West Virginia – Rock Springs Boulevard

In the corner of the northern panhandle of West Virginia, the phone in the master bedroom of the three-story stone house on the corner of Rock Springs Boulevard and Fifth Street woke Joshua Thornton up from a sound sleep. “What do you want?”

“Did I wake you?” Dr. Tad MacMillan asked with a hint of fear in his tone.

In bed next to him, Cameron Gates grasped her husband’s arm. Accidentally, she dug her fingernails into his wrist. “Why can’t they leave us alone?”

Yanking his arm from her grasp, Joshua rolled over to check the time on the clock. “Ah, man! It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“Am I interrupting something?” Tad asked.

“Only if you count sleep.” After three attempts, Joshua found the switch to turn on the lamp on the night stand. “At ten o’clock, Tracy called from New York to say hi. At eleven, J.J. called to chat. And then, at midnight Donny called to say he got to D.C. and found Murphy’s townhouse okay but couldn’t get through to let me know he was still alive. I swear, I didn’t talk to those kids so much when they lived at home.”

With a groan, Cameron rolled over and buried her head under the pillow. At the foot of the bed, Irving, Cameron’s Maine Coon, which was marked like a skunk, leapt off the bed and scurried out of the bedroom to find someplace quieter to sleep. Seemingly undisturbed, Admiral, the family’s Great Dane-Irish Wolfhound-mix was snoring loudly next to her side of the bed.

“Why are you calling me at two o’clock in the morning?” Joshua asked.

After a career as a top JAG officer with the Navy, followed by a career as Hancock County’s prosecuting attorney, all while raising five children alone after the death of his wife, Joshua felt that he had earned the right and freedom to be an empty nester, which he was looking forward to happening when his sixteen year old son would go off to college.

Now, that wasn’t going to happen.

In a matter of months, Joshua met, fell in love, and married Cameron Gates, a sassy homicide detective with the Pennsylvania State Police. He brought five grown children and an oversized dog to the marriage. She brought one twenty-five pound cat with separation anxiety and other issues. You’d have issues too if you looked like a skunk.

Joshua’s cousin, Dr. Tad McMillan explained the reason for his call. “I’m here at Fox’s nursing home with a patient and she’s asking for you.”

“Who is it?”

“Gina Robb,” Tad answered.

“I don’t know a Gina Robb.”

“I doubt if you would,” Tad said. “She lived on a big farm out past New Manchester. Her husband died forty years ago. Keeps to herself. Rarely comes to town. She has liver cancer and is going downhill fast.” His voice softened. “She’s not going home, but before she passes she wants to talk to Frieda Thornton’s boy, the county prosecutor.”

“That would be me.”

“Can you come?”

With a sigh, Joshua looked over at where Cameron was curled up in a ball under the covers next to him. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Tad met Joshua at the door of the main entrance of the nursing home section of The Orchards, a retirement community nestled on the outskirts of Chester.

On their way to the room at the end of the hall, Joshua asked, “Did she know Grandmomma?”

“Everyone knew Grandmomma.”

Tad opened the door to reveal a priest sitting next to the bed. Seeing Joshua in his jeans and t-shirt under a light jacket, the priest excused himself to step outside, with assurance that he would be close by when needed. Tad stepped over to the bed to check the numbers on the monitor for the medical equipment attached to the patient in the bed.

Waiting next to the door, Joshua tried to think of why the shriveled, wrinkled, gray woman in the bed would be asking for him when she was on death’s door. Ah, man, please don’t let it be a confession to murder on your death bed. The last thing I need is a murder confession on the first day of our vacation home alone.

“Gina?” Tad raised his voice to break through to where she was drifting—somewhere between deep sleep and unconsciousness. “Can you hear me, Gina? Joshua Thornton is here to see you.”

Her lids fluttered open to reveal yellowed eyeballs containing spheres of faded brown. “Joshua? Who?” Her eyes seemed to become disembodied while rolling around in their sockets in search of her visitor.

“Frieda Thornton’s grandson.” Tad gestured for him to sit in the chair vacated by the priest.

It took effort for Joshua to lay his hand on hers. The long yellowed fingernails attached to her boney fingers made her hands resemble a witch’s claw. “Here I am, Mrs. Robb.”

She jumped with a squawk at his touch. After lifting her head from the pillow, she turned her head to look at him. With the rest of her body lying inert and her head lifting and turning in his direction, she reminded him of a demon-possessed doll in an old horror film he had seen years ago.

What was the name of that movie? The doll went around killing people. It was the one that Murphy and J.J. had sneaked out of bed to watch … Think about it later, Josh. You didn’t get up at two in the morning to come here to play What’s That Movie?

“Thornton? Josh?” She uttered another noise to communicate her surprise upon making him out with her yellow eyes. “Thornton?”

“I’m Joshua Thornton. My grandmother was Frieda Thornton.”

“I knew a Johnny Thornton.”

“That was my father,” Joshua told her. “My parents were killed in a car accident when I was five years old. Grandmomma Frieda raised me.”

Tad paused in keeping track of her vital signs to explain. “You were asking for Joshua, the county prosecutor.”

“I remember.” With all the strength she had, she sat up to peer into his face. “Johnny had dark hair.” The wrinkles in her face deepened.

Joshua ran his fingers through his silver hair. “I used to have dark hair. Raising five teenagers on your own can take a toll on a man.”

“I didn’t know your family very well,” she said, “but I did know them well enough to know that when a Thornton gives his word, he means it.”

Joshua replied, “Grandmomma always told me that your word is the most valuable thing you own. No one can steal it from you. You’re value as a human being is directly connected to the value of your word. Don’t give it away lightly.”

Her eyes grew wide while she pointed a claw at him. “That’s why I told them to call you. Because I knew that if a Thornton gave me his word then—” She broke off into a coughing fit.

While Tad fed her a drink of water through a straw, they exchanged glances.

“It’s Billy,” she gasped out after regaining her breath.

“Billy?” Joshua looked up to his cousin who was watching the heart monitor on the other side of the bed.

Tad MacMillan seemed to know everyone in the Ohio Valley. If he didn’t know them personally, he knew of them and most likely the story and secrets behind them. “Are you talking about your son?”

“Billy.” She grasped Joshua’s wrist in a grip stronger than he expected from a dying woman. The cold touch of her hands sent a shiver through his body. “They said he did an awful thing, but he didn’t. A mother knows her son. They made it look like he killed that woman and then they shot him in the head to make it look like he killed himself.” She sucked in a wheezy breath. “Now everyone thinks my Billy was a monster.”

“Did you talk to the police?” Joshua asked.

“They know the truth already,” she said. “They let whoever killed that woman and my boy get away with it. They had a conspiracy against my son. They covered it up.”

Her chest heaved up and down. A tear slid out of the corner of one of her eyes. “Every day I told myself that I was going to do whatever I had to do, to call whoever I had to call, but I didn’t. Instead, I’ve spent all these years wallowing in my sorrow. Now there isn’t any time left. I promised Billy on his grave that I would clear his name before I died and now …” She gazed at him with her yellow eyes. “That’s why I asked Doc MacMillan to call you, Mr. Thornton.”

Joshua jerked up straight in his seat. “I don’t know, Mrs. Robb.”

She grabbed his hand into both of hers. Her claws dug into his wrist. “Please, Mr. Thornton,” she begged. “I know that if anyone can cut through the crap to find out the truth and clear Billy’s name, it would be Frieda Thornton’s little boy. Give me your word, please. I’ve never asked for anything from anyone before. I’m a proud woman, but now I have no pride left. Maybe if I had asked for help before … I’m desperate, Mr. Thornton. Let Billy and me can rest in peace. Give me your word that you’ll clear Billy’s name.”

Her gray wrinkled face reminded Joshua of a witch he had seen in yet another old movie.

Focus, old man. Stop thinking about old movies and focus, will you? This woman wants you to clear her dead son of a murder that he may or may not have committed. What if he did it? You can’t swear to clear his name if he did it.

With a stern look in his eyes, Tad was staring at him. Don’t do it, Joshua could hear the doctor telling him telepathically.

“Mr. Thornton,” she brought his hand up to her face to sob into it. “Please tell me that you’ll help my Billy.” Dropping his hand to roll over to the other side of the bed, she clawed for a canvas bag resting in a chair next to the wall.

Seeing what she was reaching for, Tad picked up the bag by its straps and handed it to her. When he picked it up, it fell open to reveal that it contained a thick file folder filled with papers.

Shoving the papers threatening to fall out of the bag back inside, she handed it to Joshua. “Here’s everything you need to get started. Everything that I have cut out of newspapers about the suspects. I also have a letter in there from Deep Throat.” She winked playfully at him.

“Deep Throat?” Joshua asked.

“Deep Throat knows the truth.”

“If Deep Throat knows the truth, why won’t he go public with it?”

Tears returned to her eyes. “I don’t know. He sent me a letter—It’s in there. He knows Billy was framed and murdered. I tried to bring out the truth, but…I failed. I failed my only son.” Her fingers were once again digging into Joshua’s arm. “Promise me that you’ll do what I failed to do.”

“I will. I promise.”

“You’ve lost your mind.” Tad chastised his cousin when they were alone in the corridor and out of Gina Robb’s earshot. “You gave that woman your word that you’d clear Billy’s name. She’s dying. Do you know what it means to make a promise to a dying woman? What if you can’t clear Billy’s name? What if he did it? Do you want to spend an eternity in hell?”

Joshua said, “I wouldn’t have promised her on her deathbed that I’d clear his name if I didn’t think that I could.”

Tad shook a finger in his younger cousin’s face. “You would never have even begun to give your word about something like this five years ago. Ever since your kids have started moving out and you can’t have the end all control over what happens to them—” He paused to catch his breath. “You put yourself in her place. You imagined Billy being one of your kids—”

Joshua wished he could deny that Tad was right. Sometimes it was spooky the way he could read his mind.

“Do you even know what Billy Robb was accused of doing?” Tad asked. “Do you know who they said he killed?”

“Who?”

“Rachel Burke.”

“Who’s that?” Joshua searched his memory. Tad’s tone made it sound as if he should know who she was, but the name didn’t ring a bell.

“Miss Pennsylvania 1996. Gorgeous redhead,” Tad said. “She was found stabbed to death in her beauty salon in 2001—the week before September 11. That’s probably why you don’t know about it. You were stationed in Hawaii then.”

“Yeah,” Joshua said. “I had other things occupying my mind.”

“Well, she was the All-American beauty and successful business woman. She was working late in her salon after closing and they said Billy Robb, who had been nothing but trouble since he was born, killed her because she had fired him for being a screw up. They found the murder weapon, a pair of scissors from her shop in his apartment, right next to the chair where he had blown his brains out. Billy had a long record of theft, drugs, and assault.” He gestured at the dying woman down the hall. “How do you think you can possibly prove that he didn’t do it with all that? She’s only got days to live and you promised to clear Billy Robb’s name.”

“I never thought it would be easy,” Joshua said. “No murder case is.”

“Do you want to fool around?” Clad in his blue bathrobe, Cameron came up behind Joshua and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed him between the shoulder blades and rested her head against his back.

“Didn’t we do that last night?” he asked with a laugh. While waiting for his bagel to pop from the toaster, he turned around to take her into his arms. She reached up to bring his lips down to hers.

Perched next to the kitchen counter, Admiral watched with worry that Cameron would make his master forget about the bagel, of which he was expecting the last bite.

“I do plan on going back to bed.” He opened her robe to see that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. “I certainly won’t object to having company.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” After closing up the robe and tying the belt, she took the container of cream cheese out of the fridge and got a knife to spread on the bagel.

At the sound of the fridge door opening, Irving jumped up in the window sill to get a better view of what they were doing at the counter.

“What happened at the nursing home?” Cameron asked while spreading the cream cheese over the two halves of the bagel. She handed one half to Joshua while taking the other for herself.

Admiral belched as if to remind them of his presence. Forgetting to reserve the last bite for him would be a big mistake.

Sensing that there was something going on that he was missing, Irving jumped down from his perch and scurried across the floor to take a spot in between Irving’s front legs. He got there in the nick of time. Cameron tossed one bite to Admiral, which he caught in mid-air, and a second bite down to the floor for Irving to scoop up and take away to devour in private. While she was feeding the animals, Joshua was pouring two mugs of coffee and carrying them over to the table.

She joined him. “Was it a murder confession?”

“Nope.”

“Tell me.” She reached over to stroke the back of his hand.

Admiring her tousled short hair that reminded him of the color of cinnamon, he shot her a grin. “Do you remember Billy Robb, suspected of killing Rachel Burke, a former beauty queen, in Robinson Township back in the 2001, the week before September 11. Robb was from Chester.”

“I remember Billy Robb,” she said. “I wasn’t on the case, but certainly heard about it. Rachel Burke had become a name. Local celebrity. Was in the Miss America Pageant. There was a big uproar with the politicians to close the case and close it fast.”

“And we all know how that works,” he grumbled. “Under pressure to close a case fast and satisfy the public, not to mention the bosses and media, the police would never rush to pin the blame on the first most likely suspect without closely examining the evidence.”

“Billy Robb was no stranger to the police,” she argued. “He had a history of breaking into stores at night, drugs, and violence. Not only that, but he knew Rachel Burke. She was nice enough to have given him a maintenance job at the salon when no one else would, because she believed in second chances. Thing is, he stopped showing up for work so she had to fire him.” She pointed a finger at him as the thought came to her mind. “If you promised to look into the Burke case to prove Robb innocent, you’re going to end up getting haunted by that old woman because the evidence said he did it.”

“Donny is coming home from Washington in two weeks. That gives us two weeks to prove Robb didn’t do it.” He reached for the canvas bag on the chair next to him and emptied the contents across the top of the table.

Without invitation, Cameron dug in with the enthusiasm of a child finding a bag of candy.

The packet was organized. It had copies of public records and news clippings about the murder of Rachel Burke in her beauty salon in Pittsburgh, and the suicide of Billy Robb in his apartment.

“Interesting,” Cameron said upon seeing the police report.

“What’s so interesting?” he asked her.

“I never noticed the name of the lead investigator before.” She shrugged. “But then, this all happened before I got to know him. Ralph Ellicott.”

“What do you know about him? Is he dirty?”

“If you consider a political player to be synonymous with dirty, yes.” Her brows furrowed with suspicion. “Being the lead in the Burke case didn’t hurt his career. He’s now the state police captain in the district.”

Joshua smiled at her. “You’re getting curious.”

While Cameron tried to decipher the contents of the police report, Joshua found the prime motivation for the mother on her search for her son’s justice. It was a letter inside an envelope that he found resting on top of the stack of clippings. The envelope had no return address. The postmark was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and sent almost eighteen months after the murder.

The one page letter started out with an apology for not coming forward sooner.

But I cannot live with myself if I do not let you know the truth. I was close to the investigation into Rachel Burke’s murder and, based on my professional experience, I do not believe your son killed her. Nor do I believe your son killed himself.

Your son, William was framed and murdered and someone is covering up the truth! I’m sorry I can’t tell you who is behind this or why.

I don’t know what, or if, there is anything you can do to bring out the truth, Mrs. Robb, but I felt that I had to let you know that. Maybe in some way it can give you comfort knowing that your son was not a killer.

Cameron dropped what was left of her bagel onto her plate. “Did they say Billy Robb was framed and murdered?”

“Yep.” His finger on the words, Joshua held the letter over in front of her face for her to read. “Right there. F-R-A-M-E-D and M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D. Framed and murdered.”

“I’ll get my gun.” Cameron jumped out of her chair and ran up the stairs.

“You might want to put on some clothes, too.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” Peggy Hewitt said more than once when Joshua explained the reason for calling her out of the blue years after she had retired from the Pennsylvania State Police. “How did you find me?”

Joshua explained about using his role as Hancock County prosecuting attorney to get the state crime lab to lift her fingerprints from the letter and envelope she had sent to Gina Robb. The prints were matched to hers in the AFIS system under government employee database.

“Less than a week after you retired,” he told her, “Gina Robb received an anonymous letter saying her son was framed. You must have found something very intriguing while processing the evidence from Rachel Burke’s murder and Billy Robb’s death for it to eat at you for over a year. What did you find that was so compelling that you had to shoot her a letter as soon as you had your pension?”

The silence he heard across the phone line lasted so long that he thought she had hung up.

“Who did you say you were again?” she asked.

“Joshua Thornton. I’m the prosecuting attorney in Hancock County, West Virginia,” he said. “Gina Robb is dying and her last wish is to have her son’s name cleared. She gave me everything she had collected about his case. If he’s innocent, I’d like to prove it. I can’t do that unless you tell me what evidence you saw that made you write to her.”

Again, there was silence.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

Click.

With a sigh, Joshua hung up the phone.

“She’s not going to help us?” Cameron asked from where she was sitting on the sofa in his study. Irving had made himself at home in her lap.

“Nope.” Again, Joshua went over the information they had collected from the folder and the Internet about the Rachel Burke case. Cameron had also used her position to log remotely into the state police computer records to download their case file.

The death of a former beauty queen turned successful business woman draws a lot of attention. Forensics lab technician Peggy Hewitt had to have seen the physical evidence in the crime labs that proved Billy Robb was innocent.

While Joshua had no authority to compel the Pennsylvania State Police to reopen the case, he did have connections—a wife who happened to be a Pennsylvania State Police homicide detective. Cameron had access to almost everything they needed to look into the case on their own.

Joshua was drinking his second beer while sharing a bowl of popcorn with Cameron when his administrative assistant, Mary, called from the office in New Cumberland. “Hey, Chief, I didn’t want to bother you at home during your vacation, but thought I’d check with you on this before I deleted it.”

Joshua was only half paying attention when she said that she had received an e-mail into the county prosecuting attorney’s info account from an unknown e-mail address.

Mary said, “It’s a hotmail account with the name Deep Throat and it’s addressed to you. It says in big red bold letters, ‘Eyes Only’ and it has a pdf attachment. I was about to delete it, but then, knowing you, there’s no telling what clandestine stuff you’re up to on your vacation. I thought I’d check.”

Sitting up in his recliner, Joshua wondered if Peggy was helping him after all. “Send it to me.”

After decades of working for the state police, she was afraid of having the information traced back to her. So she sent it to my office using a free hotmail account and probably from a wi-fi hotspot.

Like a teenage boy waiting for a call from the prettiest girl in his class, Joshua stared at his laptop until the ding signaled the arrival of an e-mail from his assistant. The e-mail she had forwarded contained one sentence to him.

To Joshua Thornton. Eyes Only. From Deep Throat.

The attachment was labeled Report.

The scanned document was over a hundred pages, which included the forensics report and pathology report for both Rachel Burke and Billy Robb.

Now it was up to Joshua and Cameron to find what Peggy Hewitt had uncovered that proved Billy Robb and Rachel Burke were the victims of a murder conspiracy.

The sun had gone down on Cameron and Joshua’s third day of vacation when Tad and Jan stopped by on their way out to dinner to discover that the newlyweds had already eaten. The open pizza box covered the desk in his study. Snoring away, Admiral was sacked out on the sofa with Irving stretched out across his back.

In the center of the room, scattered paper covered the floor with what Tad recognized to be a forensics report. Bent over the paper lined Oriental rug, Joshua stared at it. Cameron was studying the police report for the umpteenth time.

“Did your printer explode?” Tad asked.

Seeing Tad and Jan wearing jackets, Cameron glanced out the window to see that during the time they had been piecing everything together, the sun had gone down and storm clouds had rolled in.

Jan said, “We were going out to dinner and wanted to know if you two wanted to come along.”

“We ate,” Joshua said, “but thanks.”

“Maybe you’d like to share your special sundae at Cricksters,” Jan offered.

“What is this?” Tad asked about the scattered papers.

Joshua picked up one page of the report and waved it over his head. “He didn’t do it.”

“Do you mean Billy?”

Anger seeped into Joshua’s tone. “He didn’t kill Rachel Burke. Gina has been right all along.”

Tad slumped onto the arm of the sofa. “Do you mean all these years that everyone has thought she couldn’t accept that her son was a monster? That everyone thought she was delusional saying that he was the victim of a conspiracy –”

“—and murdered?” Jan squeezed in on the sofa between Admiral’s butt and the sofa’s arm. “People have been telling her all these years that she had to accept it.”

“Someone framed her son, her only son, and killed him, and they got away with it.” Joshua clinched his jaws. “And I’m going to find out who was behind this cover up before she passes away.”

“We’re going to,” Cameron corrected him.

“Josh … Cameron,” Tad said, “Gina slipped into a coma last night. She can pass at any time.”

“She’s not dead yet,” Joshua said. “She has to die in peace with the world knowing that Billy didn’t do it.”

Jan asked, “How do you know he was innocent?”

Joshua gestured at the fan of papers that scattered the floor. “It’s all right here.”

“Exhibit A.” Cameron held out a sheet of paper to her husband, which he snatched to show Tad.

“Billy Robb had no carbon on his hands,” Joshua told him. “He didn’t fire a gun. So he didn’t shoot himself in the head.” He handed the report over to Tad.

Jan read the report over her husband’s shoulder.

“Then we have the matter of Robb’s clothes.” He grabbed another sheet of paper to add to the previous one in the doctor’s hand.

Jan asked, “What about them?”

“They weren’t his,” Cameron said. “All the witnesses who knew Billy Robb said he was a goth. Yet, he was found wearing a purple shirt and blue jeans.”

Joshua tapped his finger on a section of the report that she was referring to. “Goths don’t wear purple.”

Tad pointed out. “Maybe he decided to quit being a goth.”

“If we can find these clothes in evidence” Cameron said, “I think forensics will be able to determine if Billy was wearing those clothes or not.”

“According to these forensics reports,” Joshua said, “the clothes that Robb was wearing when he was killed—”

“The non-gothic clothes,” Cameron interjected.

“—the clothes that had Rachel Burke’s blood and tissue all over them, they were expensive and tailor-made. The pants didn’t fit him. The top button wasn’t even fastened.”

“What about the murder weapon?” Jan asked. “The scissors from the salon? Wasn’t that found in his room?”

Joshua said, “It had Robb’s fingerprints on it, but those could have been planted. That doesn’t prove he did it.” He gestured at the report scattered before them. “This proves he didn’t. His fingerprints weren’t found in the salon. Nowhere in any of these reports does it have one bit of evidence proving that Billy Robb was even at the crime scene.”

“If Billy didn’t do it,” Cameron said, “and there is no evidence to place him in that salon at the time of the murder, then someone else killed Rachel Burke and that someone killed Billy to frame him.”

Jan asked, “Could it have been a government conspiracy like Gina always said?”

Cameron’s mind was still working. “Whoever it was had enough power to get the state police to cover it up. Rachel Burke had some rich and powerful friends.”

“Rachel Burke was killed the week after Labor Day weekend,” Tad recalled. “I remember the news saying that she had a big swanky Labor Day party, a fundraiser for Senator Linda Pryor, the day before she was killed. The media made a big deal about all the big names in sports and politics that was there.”

Joshua gathered together more pages from the scattered report. “Which brings me to Rachel Burke’s autopsy report. It was never mentioned in the media that she had consensual sexual relations shortly before she was killed. Yet, she wasn’t married or raped.”

Taking the reports, Tad asked, “Did the police get a DNA profile from the semen?”

“No match in the system,” Cameron said, “according to the forensics report. And nowhere in this case file is there any mention of them ever identifying who she was with.”

“Based on that,” Joshua said. “Rachel Burke had sex with a man. Something went wrong and he killed her. Billy Robb, who had a long history with the police in the area, had a beef with the victim and our killer knew that. That made him an excellent patsy for our unidentified lover boy to frame him for killing the beauty queen.”

“She had a broken arm,” Tad said.

“What did you say?” Cameron asked.

“Broken arm.” Tad held up the report as if she could read it from across the room. “The ME mentions it in Rachel Burke’s autopsy.”

“Defensive wound,” Cameron said with a shrug.

“I don’t think so,” Tad said. “He says right here that it was at least a day old at the time of her death. A hairline fracture from her elbow down to her wrist. Must have been painful, but I have had patients, thinking that it was a bad sprain or pulled muscle, come to me only to discover that their arm was broken.”

Joshua knelt over the papers on the floor. “Well, with Gina Robb in a coma, we don’t have time to sit here speculating about who could have done it. The best way for us to get answers to our questions is to talk to someone who was there.”

“Who?” Jan asked.

Joshua said, “Rachel had a twin sister.”

Cameron was spoiled. Since living in Chester after marrying Joshua, she had grown accustomed to country driving. As soon as she entered the Pittsburgh city limits, she felt her shoulders tense when she went on alert. In her cruiser, she felt like she was driving a tank into combat while waiting for some wayward motorist texting their BFF to plow into her.

She was relieved when she finally found the bistro where Police Captain Ralph Ellicott was known to frequent lunch on a side street near PNC stadium. After putting fifty cents in the meter, she pasted a smile on her lips and stepped inside the restaurant.

In her black slacks and leather jacket, the police detective, with her tousled brown hair, looked out of place in the restaurant that catered to those known and wanting to be known in the political arena. Cameron could tell without looking at the price list that this was out of her range.

Why didn’t I ask Josh to take this and I take the sister of the victim?

She spotted Ralph Ellicott in a corner booth. If it weren’t for his expensive suit with a blood red tie and a gold watch that caught off the light shining down on it from over their table, the police captain would have looked like the squirt Cameron’s friends had said he was. He was short, skinny, with thin hair that was as pale as his face with its weak jaw and beady eyes.

He reminded Cameron of a lizard.

She hated him before even meeting him. You need to stop that, Cam.

She passed by a table filled with a party of women dressed in brightly colored suits and pumps. Spotting the detective’s gun holstered on her hip, they paused in drinking their margaritas to watch Cameron make her way to the corner booth.

“Captain Ellicott?” Cameron asked.

The state police captain jerked from where he was in conversation with a young man with light brown hair dressed in a gray suit with a blue tie. An expression of annoyance crossed his face.

Cameron offered her hand, which he ignored. “Detective Cameron Gates.” She flashed him her badge which she wore clipped to her belt next to her gun. “I’m from the state police barracks in Beaver district. Could I have a moment of your time?”

“The Beaver District?” After looking the female detective up and down, a smirk crossed his face. “You’re a little out of your way, detective.”

Even though he didn’t offer, Cameron slipped into the booth to sit on the very edge of the cushion. The couple of men on her side were gentlemen enough to squeeze over to give her some room, but not much. “I’ve been going over some of the old cases from our district to prepare them for archiving,” she lied, “and found one of yours. The Rachel Burke murder.”

“Oh, I remember that case well,” Ralph Ellicott said with a wide smile, the first one he flashed since Cameron approached their table. He took a sip of his drink, which Cameron could tell was a scotch—double. After uttering a gasp of satisfaction, he added, “That case made my career.”

“Even though there was no physical evidence to connect Billy Robb to the murder scene,” Cameron said.

The smile dropped from Ralph Ellicott’s face.

The other men at the table inched away from her as if the tension that dropped down onto the party was contagious. They all feared falling victim to the fallout that was surely to come.

In contrast, the young man in the gray suit sitting next to Captain Ellicott stared straight across the table at her. The corner of his lip curled.

“What do you want, detective?” Ellicott demanded. “Why are you here?”

“Before this case can be permanently closed and archived, I want to know if there’s any possibility of a mistake.”

“Mistake?” the police captain shouted.

The men to her right squirmed. With no way out of the booth, they were trapped to witness the scene that was unfolding.

“Let’s face it,” Cameron said, “based on the lack of physical evidence putting Billy Robb at the murder scene, if he had lived to stand trial, he would have gotten off, and most likely you wouldn’t be sitting here wearing the captain’s badge. So, my question, before I archive this case, is to you: Who did you not question in the murder of Rachel Burke?”

“Billy Robb committed suicide because he knew I was closing in on him?”

“Actually, the evidence says he didn’t shoot himself in the head,” Cameron said. “According to the forensics report that I uncovered in my investigation, the real one, there was no carbon on his hands. How do you shoot yourself in the head without getting carbon on your hand? Billy Robb was murdered and framed for Rachel Burke’s murder. Whoever did it had the forensics report that was put in the official case file altered to read like he did do it. The only thing I don’t know is if you were in on it and got rewarded with being put on the fast track to where you are now, or if you’re fool enough to have been duped along with everyone else.”

Ellicott stood up as far as he could while trapped in the corner of his booth. “Get out of here!”

Out on the street, Cameron looked up from where she was opening her car door when she saw the man in the gray suit. He glanced over his shoulder before going around the front of her SUV to step up to her. With his back to his friends in the restaurant, a wide grin crossed his face. “You have a lot of guts, lady.” He clasped her on the shoulder on his way past. Feeling his hand make contact with her hip, she thought he was trying to grope her, which made her jump back.

He continued on his way around the cruiser to the sidewalk and on down the street.

She felt her hip where his hand had seemed to grab her. Inside her jacket pocket, she felt a stiff piece of paper—a business card.

She took it out to read the front:

Victor Sinclair

Public Relations Officer

Pennsylvania State Police

On the back, written in handwriting: For Info RE Burke, Call 412-555-8356. Say Vic sent you!!!

Joshua hated the driving around the Mall at Robinson Town Centre near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He could never determine which way he was supposed to go in the multitude of access roadways around the shopping center. To add to his frustration, he seemed to almost always park near the entrance at the opposite end of the mall from where he wanted to go.

For some reason that was foreign to him, his kids loved the place. They would go early and spend the day hanging out with their friends. At the end of the day, they would come home with shopping bags full of goodies and his credit cards maxed out.

That was another reason Joshua hated the place.

He was there for one reason and one reason only: to meet Susan Burke, Rachel’s twin sister.

According to the witness statements Gina Robb had managed to uncover during her investigation, Susan and her twin were inseparable. They were the best of friends. Even though they were identical, they were easy to tell apart. Rachel was the beautiful and outgoing sister, while Susan was shy and more serious.

As the father of twins himself, Joshua found that his two older sons, Murphy and Joshua Junior (J.J.) had developed such distinct personalities that they were no longer identical. Murphy, a recent graduate of the Naval Academy and now serving at the Pentagon, wore his hair short. He was fun loving and outgoing, which showed in every way. Meanwhile, J.J. was more reserved. A student in law school, he wore his hair longer, to the top of his collar like his father.

The Burke twins attended the University of Pittsburgh. Both had graduated with Bachelors of Science in Business. Susan went on to get her masters, while Rachel used her celebrity as a beauty queen to open her upscale salon, Rachel’s. After her murder, Susan, who had inherited the salon, went on to turn it into a popular franchise.

The home office and salon was in Robinson Town Centre, the same salon where Rachel Burke had been murdered.

Joshua found it tucked in a corner near a major department store. Rachel’s offered everything for the woman wanting to be pampered from hair styling to manicures and pedicure to massages, facials, and other beauty treatments to soft relaxation soundscape music.

Upon entering, he was directed to a woman sitting behind the reception desk working on a mini-laptop.

Susan Burke was dressed in a low-cut, flowing ivory lace dress that reached down to her ankles, which were encased in white lace up boots with high heels. Her red hair fell in spiral curls all the way down to her waist in something that looked to Joshua like a nest. Her pink skin was touched by the ultra-violet rays of the tanning booth in the back.

Her polish and attractiveness suggested that she had once been a beauty queen or was the twin of a beauty queen.

“May I help you?” she flashed a bright white smile at him.

“Are you Susan Burke?” he asked.

She regarded the neatly dressed man in slacks and a sports jacket. With his silver wavy hair and blue eyes framed with crow’s feet, he was an attractive specimen. Even so, she wasn’t going to be so quick to answer. “May I ask who wants to know?”

“Joshua Thornton.” After showing her his identification, he stuck out his hand for her to shake. “I’m the prosecuting attorney in Hancock County, West Virginia.”

She refused to take his hand. “I don’t live in West Virginia.”

“I’m here about your sister, Rachel Burke. I have a few questions about her murder.”

“What type of questions could you possibly have?” She placed her hands on her hips. “You have no right or authority to be asking questions about it. I hate to be rude, but Rachel was my sister, my twin, and my best friend, and finding her body was one of the most horrific things that could happen to anyone.” She pointed to the mall entrance. “I’d thank you to please leave.”

Without moving, he appealed to her sensitivity. “Billy Robb’s mother has been wanting to know what happened ever since her son, her only child, died. For years she has been trying to find out but no one will talk to her. Now she’s dying. Can’t you help me so that she can die in peace?”

With her arms across her chest, she said, “What I know isn’t going to help her die in peace.”

“Are you certain Billy Robb killed your sister?”

“He threatened to come back and kill her after she fired him for not showing up for work,” she said. “There’s no reason on earth to think he didn’t do it?”

“If he did do it,” Joshua replied, “then taking a second look at things won’t do any harm, will it? But if he didn’t, then taking a second look will give us the opportunity to catch who really killed your sister. So you have nothing to lose.” He flashed his most charming smile.

“Her blood all over him,” she countered, “and they found the scissors he had used to stab her to death in his room. They still had her blood on them.”

“All of it could have been planted,” Joshua said. “This will only take a few minutes of your time.”

She glanced around the salon as if it had suddenly grown ears before asking in a low voice, “Have you talked to the police about this?”

“Yes.” Technically, he had spoken to the police since his own wife was a detective. Though, he was sure that wasn’t what Susan meant. “According to my information, you came to the salon and found Rachel shortly after midnight the night of the murder.”

Her voice shook. “I was in bed and I suddenly got this feeling.” She clutched her chest. “That would happen every now and then between us. I guess it’s the twin thing. I couldn’t shake it. I knew Rachel was working late that night. I called and she didn’t answer. So I came out to check on her. That’s when I found her.” With a toss of her head, that shook her long curls, she gestured toward the office in the back of the salon. “Back there.” Her voice hardened. “I knew it was Billy as soon as I saw her.”

A boy, young teenager, swept in through the door. His book bag slung across his shoulders encased in an orange athletic jacket with Sewickley Academy, a private school insignia stenciled on the left breast, the earbuds of an MP3 player in his ears, Joshua guessed him to be about thirteen. His hair was a mound of golden blond curls.

“Tyler, what are you doing here?” Susan blurted out when she saw him.

Tyler tugged on the cord to pop one of the buds from his ears. “Doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Did you forget? The doctor has to sign my release before I can do soccer.”

She cast a glance in Joshua’s direction. “I didn’t notice the time.”

Tyler followed her eyes to notice Joshua. “Can I have some money to get lunch in the food court then while you’re talking?”

Susan told Joshua, “I have to get my purse. We really don’t have much time. I need to get Tyler to the doctor. He pulled a tendon playing baseball. Now he needs the doctor to approve him playing soccer. It’s always something.”

“I can wait.”

Her expression when she hurried back to the offices in the back of the store conveyed that she wasn’t thrilled to hear Joshua say that.

While waiting for his lunch money, Tyler looked Joshua up and down.

Joshua startled him by noting, “I heard Sewickley is trying to get a football program going?”

“Yeah, but I doubt if that will happen before I graduate.” Tyler frowned. “But I’ll be playing football at University of Pittsburgh, though. It’s a tradition.”

Her purse under her arm, Susan came rushing back while counting out bills. “Here you go, Tyler.” She shoved a bill into his palm. “This should only take a few minutes with Mr. Thornton and then we can go.”

“Thanks.” Tyler took the money and ran.

After telling the receptionist that she was leaving for the afternoon, Susan led Joshua in the general direction of the food court. “I don’t know what you could possibly think I would know that could help you.”

“You were here,” Joshua reminded her. “Say it wasn’t Billy Robb. Can you think of who else would have done that to Rachel?”

“No. No one. Everyone loved Rachel.” She turned to leave, but he stopped her.

“How did he get in?”

She whirled back around. “What?”

“Billy Robb,” Joshua said. “Rachel had fired him. I guess she forgot to get the key to the salon back.”

“He never had it,” Susan said. “Rachel was kind, but she wasn’t stupid.”

“But if he had threatened her when she fired him, then why did she let him in late at night when she was here alone.”

Susan’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“She had to have let him in,” he said. “There was no sign of forced entry.”

“Maybe he was waiting outside and forced her back inside to kill her,” Susan said. “He did blow his own brains out.”

“Maybe.” Recalling the semen found in Rachel Burke and at the scene, Joshua asked, “Was Rachel in a relationship?”

While her face was blank, her eyes were wide in a show of innocence. “Why are you asking about that?”

“You’d be surprised how many times when a woman is killed, it’s connected to a boyfriend or lover.”

She glanced around before answering in a low voice. “Well, Rachel wasn’t a virgin, but she certainly wasn’t fooling around with a married man, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He said, “I didn’t ask if she was having an affair with a married man, I asked if she was in a relationship.”

Her expression changed to one of guilt.

“Since you brought it up, could she have been having an affair with a married man?”

This question resulted in loud laughter. “No.” She glanced around. “No,” she said more firmly.

The more firmly she said it, the more Joshua didn’t believe her.

Joshua met Cameron in a run-down shopping center halfway between Pittsburgh and the West Virginia state line. When he pulled his SUV into the parking lot, she got out of her cruiser and went around to his driver’s side.

Joshua rolled down his window. After she kissed him hello, she announced. “I think I found a witness.”

“You think?” The assurance he had felt upon reading her text to him dissipated.

She showed the business card that Victor had slipped into her pocket to him. “I called this phone number and the old woman who answered seemed rather cagey about Rachel Burke, until I told her that Victor told me to call. Then, she invited me to come to her home.” She pointed at a narrow country road that maneuvered up a steep hill above the shopping center. “Her house is about halfway up the side of that hill. I don’t think the driveway is big enough for both of our SUVs.”

“I guess that means I’m driving,” Joshua said. “Jump in and let’s get this show on the road.”

They found the small two-story house to be literally built into the side of the hill.

A plump woman with silver hair peered out the living room window at them after they knocked on the door. She looked them both up and down before opening the door a crack. The chain lock remained in place while she studied them up closer with one blue-gray eyeball. “Are you Cameron?”

“Yes, we—”

“Who’s that man?” She gazed at Joshua with fear in her eyes.

“He’s my husband,” Cameron answered. “We’re investigating this case together.”

“You said nothing about bringing a man here with you,” the elderly woman said.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Joshua whispered to Cameron.

“No,” she hissed before turning to the woman. “He’s here because we’re both investigating Rachel Burke’s murder. We’re doing this for Billy Robb’s mother. She’s dying and she wants to clear her son’s name so that she can die in peace. That’s why we’re here. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We only want to bring out the truth. Victor indicated that you might know something.”

The woman was silent. “Billy Robb’s mother?”

“Gina Robb,” Joshua said.

“I didn’t know she was still alive,” the old woman said. “I guess—I never thought …” After hesitating, she closed the door. They heard the chain unlatch and she opened it again. After they went inside, she looked both ways outside to ensure the way was clear before closing the door and locking it again.

“Want some sweet tea?” She led them through the tiny living room into an equally small kitchen that was dimly lit. The kitchen table only had three chairs. “Sit down.” It sounded like an order. She was clad in a faded housedress and wore her thin gray hair pulled back. It was held in place with a plastic headband. She poured three glasses of sweet tea.

“How do you know Victor?” Cameron asked. “He’s the PR man for the state police in Pittsburgh. When I met him, he was having lunch with the captain, Ralph—”

“Ellicott is an ass.” She set the glasses in front of Joshua and Cameron. “He buried my daughter’s murder. Wouldn’t be surprised if he had something to do with it. That’s the only reason Victor puts up with him. He keeps hoping that he’ll dig something up on Ellicott and his dirty bag of tricks to nail the bastard. When he called me, he said you were the one.”

“The one?” Cameron asked.

“The first one Victor ever met with the guts to go up against Ellicott and call him out for what he is,” she said over the top of her glass. “No one has ever done that before, in all the more than a dozen years Victor has worked for him.”

“Who’s your daughter?” Joshua asked.

“Angela Jarvis.” The old woman swallowed. “My name is Becky, by the way. Becky Jarvis.” Slowly, she lowered herself into the remaining chair. “Angela was murdered on September 11, 2001. Only she wasn’t in any airplane or in New York or Washington. She was right here in Aliquippa.” She pointed out the window. “Right down there at the shopping center. She’d been working late at the office on account of the terrorist attacks. So she stopped down there to pick up a pizza to bring up home and this SUV came flying out of the dark, flipped on its lights to blind her, and ran her down and kept on going. Witnesses said it was deliberate. Ellicott jumped right into the investigation—took it away from the local police—he swore it was a hit and run by some drunk. Never went any further. He buried it.”

Cameron noted, “That was a week after Rachel Burke was murdered.”

“And Ellicott was already a big wheel for having solved her murder.” Becky nodded her head. “Angela swore up and down that Billy Robb was framed. I told the police and everyone that she was killed because of the Rachel Burke case, and they threatened to do the same to me.”

“You were threatened?” Cameron asked. “By who?”

“One night when I came home, out of the blue, there was this man who came out of the bushes and grabbed me by the arm. I had a young son here at home then.” Tears came to her eyes. “He said I already lost a daughter. I didn’t want to lose my son, too. So I backed off. But Victor, he was with the Associated Press then, too. He actually quit his job and went to work for the state police, trying to get close to Ellicott to see if he could ever find anything. He called after you got Ellicott mad and told me to expect you to call.” She turned to Joshua. “He didn’t’ tell me about you.”

“Sorry.”

“What convinced Angela that someone else killed Rachel Burke?” Cameron asked.

“The weekend before Rachel Burke was killed, she had a whole bunch of important people at her house for a cookout for Labor Day. It was real swanky. Linda Pryor was running for her first term as U.S. Senator and Angela was her publicist. So she was there taking pictures and doing interviews.” Becky jumped up from her seat and went over to the kitchen counter. She returned with a brown padded envelope. “She recorded something during one of her interviews. She wouldn’t tell me what, but Linda, Rachel, and Rachel Burke’s twin sister got into a knock out drag out fight at some point and Angela got it. Then, the very next day, Rachel got killed. Angela said it was just too convenient and was convinced that Linda Pryor had killed Rachel.”

“Why?” Joshua asked.

“I have no idea. But with all the connections that Linda Pryor had, she’s now senator, she certainly has the power to have my daughter killed, and to have a boy like Billy Robb killed and cover it up. Don’t you think?”

“And whatever it was that they were fighting about, it’s in here?” Cameron said.

“I’m positive of it. But don’t ask me what.”

After taking the envelope home, Joshua emptied the contents, which proved to be a thumb drive. While opening the drive on his computer, he listened to Tad’s update on Gina Robb’s medical condition over the phone. “Believe it or not, she came out of her coma. She’s hanging in there. We talked a little bit this morning. She keeps asking if you’ve found out anything.”

Meanwhile, Cameron was taking a call on her cell phone from Lieutenant Dugan, her supervisor. “I got a call from the head of the state police,” he was saying in a strained voice. “He says that you tracked down Ralph Ellicott in Pittsburgh where he was having lunch with some of his high profile colleagues, and you accused him of being dirty. Ellicott says you insinuated that he covered up Rachel Burke’s murder and killed Billy Robb to frame him for her murder. Tell me you didn’t do that.”

“I would,” Cameron replied, “but my mother always told me that when you tell one lie, you end up having to tell a whole bunch of lies to cover up that lie and then you end up being a liar.”

“Urgh!” Lieutenant Dugan cursed. “Cameron, you’re on vacation. What are you doing digging up old—and closed—murder cases while you’re on vacation. You told me that you were going to spend the next two weeks having sex-sex-sex with your new husband.”

“Yeah,” Cameron replied. “But there’s only so many positions that you can try and then it gets old. It was either dig up an old case or get kinky, and Josh and I are too old to get kinky.”

She smiled when she saw Joshua’s head snap in her direction. He shot her a playful glare. “Who’s too old to get kinky?” he asked her in a low voice.

Cameron’s boss was asking, “What am I supposed to tell my CO in Harrisburg?”

“The truth,” she replied. “I’m on vacation and you have no control over what I do on my vacation.”

The police lieutenant was still cursing when she hung up.

“I guess we’ve ruffled a few feathers.” Joshua gestured for her to join him over at his laptop.

“More than a few.” She sat on the corner of the desk. “Did you find anything interesting on that?”

“I’m opening it up now.”

They studied the names of the files on the removable disk drive. Most were photographs of people, many famous, some not-so-famous. Many were couples and groups smiling at the camera.

“Not only do we have pictures, but we have audio, too.” He pointed at the six audio files at the bottom of the list.

“There’s also a pdf file.” Cameron grabbed the mouse from his hand to click on the file entitled: The Lady in the Well Remains Unidentified

The article went on to report that the skeletal remains of a woman found at the bottom of an abandoned well in the Allegheny Mountains in the spring of 1998 still remained unidentified. An anthropologist and artist, using the skull had done a drawing of what the woman, estimated to be in her late teens to early twenties, would have looked like. Anyone with any information that could help to identify the woman and solve her death would be appreciated. The article contained a copy of the drawing.

The drawing reminding him of his older daughter, Joshua pushed the thought of Tracy ending up dead at such a young age from his mind.

Each of the audio files was named and had a date attached to them. All of the dates were for Labor Day 2001. Ronald Pryor, husband of the candidate for United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Another was Rachel Burke, former Miss Pennsylvania.

The name of one file jumped out at them: Labor Day Cat Fight Do Not Destroy

“The night before Rachel Burke was murdered.” Joshua clicked on the play button.

The audio file was huge. It was sixty minutes long. For over a half hour, Angela interviewed Ronald Pryor about his days as a University of Pittsburgh quarterback who had taken his team the Rose Bowl only to suffer a career ending injury the last two minutes of the game. It was a moment that changed his whole life. From there, he went on to become one of the state’s wealthiest real estate tycoons building mall after mall throughout the tri-state area.

“Where’s the cat fight?” Cameron sighed.

As soon as the words came from her mouth, it started.

“Don’t you miss the roar of the crowds?” Angela asked.

“Not as much as I love counting my money.”

They both laughed.

In the background, there was the sound of multiple women’s voices becoming louder as they came into the room.

Joshua turned up the volume.

“There you are!” sang out a feminine voice that they didn’t recognize. “Haven’t you bored her long enough with your tired old war stories?”

“He’s not boring me at all,” said Angela.

The woman’s voice warned her, “Believe me, sweetheart, after the excitement of being with Ronald Pryor wears off, then you’ll see how truly exciting he really is.”

“I think that’s Senator Pryor,” Cameron said. “I recognize her haughty attitude.”

“You do that,” Linda said in response to Ronald’s announcement that he was going into the other room, “while I have a few words with your pussy cat.”

“Now, Linda, ...” Ronald said with a plea in his voice.

“Go help with the barbecue.” It was a direct order.

There was the sound of people leaving the room.

“You’re a little hard on him, don’t you think?”

In a whisper, Cameron asked, “Who is that?”

“That’s Susan Burke,” Joshua answered. “I think. It sounds like her, but it could her twin.”

While they were speaking, Linda had gone into a dissertation of her accomplishments at his side and in the community that had won her the spot of star in her marriage. “If it wasn’t for me, Ronald would’ve ended up like all the other has-been college football stars that never learned how to cope once they’ve left the spotlight.”

It didn’t seem possible, but her tone turned uglier. “I have not worked so long and so hard to have some little bitch steal my husband from me!”

They heard the scraping of a chair across the room.

“What are you talking about?” The voice that sounded like Susan asked helplessly.

“Ronald told me all about your little bike ride!” She scoffed. “Oh, he tried to play it down as just an accident when I asked him how you hurt your arm riding a bicycle, but then—in case you haven’t noticed it already, my husband is a wimp. He breaks under any pressure—But he’s still my husband and I won’t have my political career ruined by a cheating husband and a back stabbing friend! Do you understand me? Tell me that you understand me!”

There was a long pause before she responded in a harsh whisper, “Or what? I’m going to end up like Charley.”

There was the sound of a scuffle that increased in volume until it sounded like they were on top of the recorder.

A deep forceful voice that reeked of fury caused a rumble in Linda’s voice. “Since you know what I’m capable of, then I suggest you keep your mouth shut about Charley. Have you forgotten the blood oath we took? Never to speak that name again.”

“Cool it.” a voice that sounded so similar to Susan that Joshua and Cameron looked at each other in puzzlement. “We’re all friends here. We’re in this together.”

“Is that Susan?” Cameron whispered, to which Joshua shushed her.

There was the sound of a door opening and a loud voice calling out. “Hey, I thought we were going to eat? Where’s the margaritas?”

Congeniality returned to Linda’s tone with the speed of a flipped switch. “Oh, you know how we girls can be. We get to talking and forget what we were doing. Rachel, where’s the tequila?”

Rachel answered, “I’ve got the tequila right—”

Click.

The recording ended with the tape running out.

“Obviously, Rachel hurt her arm while doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing with Ronald,” Joshua said.

“Who’s Charley?” Cameron asked.

“I don’t know,” Joshua said, “but I have a good idea of who to start asking.”

With its sprawling homes and landscaped lawns along quiet streets, Bethel Park was a Pittsburgh suburb reserved for those in the upper income brackets

Joshua climbed out of his sports car to observe the house with the in-ground pool in back on his way to the front door. The garage door was open. A Range Rover filled one of the stalls of the two-car garage. A Mustang convertible filled the other. Tyler was loading two suitcases in the back of the SUV.

“Going on vacation?” Joshua asked.

When he saw that it was Joshua, Tyler smiled. “Kind of. I’m going to spend a couple of weeks with my grandparents. They live in Arizona.”

Susan came rushing out of the house. When she saw Joshua, her sunglasses fell off her face. “What’s going on?”

“I had some more questions.”

“I wish you had called first.” She glanced in the direction of her son. “Tyler, get the rest of your bags, please while I talk to Mr. Thornton.”

Seeing his mother’s displeasure, Tyler’s cordial nature dissolved. Assuring his mother that he would be right back, he went inside.

“What’s this about?” she demanded to know once her son was out of earshot. “I told you everything that I know about Rachel.”

“You didn’t tell me that Linda Pryor, now Senator Pryor, threatened Rachel the night before she was murdered because she discovered she was having an affair with her husband while she was campaigning for senator.”

After a glance over her shoulder toward the living room window where they saw her son peering out, Susan led him into the garage out of eyesight.

When she crossed her arms over her chest, her full breasts bulged up to spill over them. “I’ve known Linda Pryor for forty years. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did kill Rachel. She’s ruthless about getting what she wants. Do I know for a fact that she did kill Rachel? No. I made it a point to stay as far away from her as possible, especially since my sister’s murder.” She sighed. “It’s too painful.”

Not wanting to give away his possession of the recording, he said, “We have a witness who overheard an argument between you, Rachel, and Linda. Rachel brought up someone named Charley and Linda ordered her to never mention that name again.”

Her mouth dropped open. She fell back against the Mustang.

“Who’s Charley?” Joshua asked.

He waited while Susan blinked the tears from her eyes. She opened and closed her mouth several times before responding. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Joshua replied. “You were there while Linda Pryor threatened your sister, your twin sister’s life about breathing his name only one day before she ends up dead and you don’t know who he is?”

“That was the first I ever heard about any of it. I’d never heard anything about it until that night.” Susan looked over at Joshua for help. “I didn’t want to know what all that was about. It was like you said. Linda told Rachel that if she ever mentioned Charley’s name that—then less than twenty-four hours later, Rachel’s dead. Like you think I’m going to be asking questions after that? I got the hell away from Linda and never breathed one word about it ever again.”

Joshua stared at her. “Why don’t I believe you?”

She pointed at the open garage door. “I think you should leave.”

He allowed her to usher him out to the driveway. “By the way, have you have been up in the Allegheny Mountains?”

“Everyone around here has been up there.” Susan glared at him. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering,” he replied. “As deep and thick as the woods are in those mountains, you can dump a body and no one would find it for years.”

Her lips, caked with pink lipstick, quivered. “Good-bye, Mr. Thornton. Next time you have questions, I think you should call my lawyer.”

It was time for lunch when Joshua Thornton pulled off the Pennsylvania turnpike to take him and Cameron to the University of Pittsburgh.

“She’s lying,” he told Cameron the dozenth time since they had left for their road trip. “She looked me straight in the eye and lied.”

Cameron agreed. “There’s no way Linda Pryor would have mentioned Charley with her in the room if she wasn’t aware of what she was talking about.”

Since the University of Pittsburgh was where the three women had met and created a lifelong bond, it was the logical place to start toward uncovering their secret.

The state park police at Allegheny National Forest was of little help to fill in the blanks about the unidentified body from the newspaper article. The officer Cameron spoke to on the phone was unfamiliar with the case. After leaving her on hold so long that she thought she had been forgotten, the officer returned to say that the case was still open. They believed Jane Doe had been killed by a blow to the head and there was no record in the case file about how long ago she would have been killed.

“Does the ME still have the remains?” Cameron asked.

“Sure,” the officer replied.

“Then you must have the DNA or dental records for comparison if that body is the remains of who I think she is,” she said.

“Who do you think she is?” the officer asked.

“I have no idea,” Cameron replied.

On the way up the twisting road toward the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, Joshua noticed a two-story red brick colonial home with green shutters that reminded him of his uncle’s farmhouse in Chester. A painted sign in the front yard read: Halston Center for Clinical Counseling. Below the phone number and website, in italic font, it read: Students Welcome.

Joshua drove on past the building to the library on the other side of the campus.

The librarian at the university library appeared to have been up too late the night before. Through sleepy eyes and lines on her face, she almost glared at Cameron for interrupting her zombie nap to ask where the school yearbooks were shelved. With a grunt, she pointed to a corner as if to order her and Joshua to detention for bothering her.

Susan, Linda, and Rachel had entered the university in 1993. They graduated in 1997. The college yearbooks for that period seemed like a worthwhile place to search for Charley or Charlene.

Joshua found Charley in the third yearbook: 1993. It helped that Ronald Pryor had been University of Pittsburgh’s star quarterback. In the 1993 yearbook, he found Ronald’s picture with a brunette with long wavy hair. The picture appeared to have been taken in a radio station where Charley Halston, a communications major, was interviewing the athlete for the university radio station.

“Charley Halston?” Joshua asked Cameron. “I wonder if that’s the same Halstons that own that clinic we passed on the way here.”

On her mini-laptop, Cameron connected to the free wi-fi to do a search of the Associated Press website for the name Charlene Halston in news items published during the years 1994-1998.

A moment later, the site came up with a handful of articles. The first in the list was dated October 13, 1996: Co-ed Disappears After Univ of Pitt-NYU Football Game

The article went on to report that Charlene Halston, a University of Pittsburgh junior, disappeared in Syracuse, New York. Reportedly, the twenty-one year old, brunette, had gotten separated from her friends while clubbing after the game. Hours later, when her friends were unable to locate her, they contacted the police.

“Charley is a missing persons,” Cameron said.

Joshua suggested, “Maybe she was found in the Allegheny Mountains.”

“Based on the tone in Rachel’s voice on that recording,” Cameron said, “they know what happened to her.”

Joshua slowly shook his head. “That’s what we assume. Nowhere on that recording does it say that they killed her.”

“Well, someone certainly killed Rachel Burke,” she said.

“A defense attorney can argue that the meaning in what Rachel said, ‘end up like Charley’ could be to end up missing,” he said.

“Spoken like a lawyer.”

“Do you like arresting people only to have them get off?” he asked. “Keep reading.”

None of the articles that had come up in the search named the friends that Charley Halston had been traveling with.

“Syracuse, New York, is north of Allegheny National Forest,” she said. “They would have gone right past, if not through, the Allegheny National Forest. Angela Jarvis must have suspected that Charley Halston was the Jane Doe whose body was found in the mountains.”

Joshua stood up. “We need to find out who Charley’s friends were.”

“If those friends were the ones who killed her,” Cameron said, “Charley didn’t need any enemies.”

“When did I get so old?” Cameron whispered to Joshua.

“About seven years after me,” he whispered back.

Sitting in the waiting room at the Halston Counseling Clinic, Cameron could not help but notice, how each of the three other people waiting were all young enough to be her children. The laugh lines on her face that jumped out at her in the mirror on the wall didn’t help any.

Like the others in the waiting room, Joshua scanned the Internet on his tablet to see if he could find more information about Charlene Halston and her disappearance in Syracuse, New York in 1996. The receptionist at the clinic had confirmed their assumption that the owner and chief psychologist at the Halston Clinic was Charley’s sister. She had been a college freshman when Charley disappeared.

This was further confirmed by a picture of Charlene and a younger version, equally pretty, of her in a frame up on the wall. “She must be the sister,” Cameron noted.

After almost an hour of waiting because they didn’t have an appointment, a young woman who looked barely old enough to be driving hurried down the stairs and out the door. She had her face buried in a tissue and made squeaky noises during her departure. They were still wondering at what had sent her running when the receptionist told him that Dr. Halston could see them and directed them to the top of the stairs.

Dr. Halston wore her long dark hair straight and had soft features. In keeping with her status of doctor, she wore a pale blue dress with a jacket accentuating her feminine curves. “You two look more like professors than students.” She offered Cameron her hand. “You can call me Sam. I know most of the professors here on campus, but I don’t believe we met.”

Joshua shook her hand after she had finished shaking Cameron’s. “That’s because we’re not. I’m a lawyer from Chester, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia; and this is my wife, Detective Cameron Gates. She’s a homicide detective with the Pennsylvania State Police.”

A flicker of fear crossed Sam’s face before she led them to her office in the corner of the upper floor. As with downstairs, Charlene had left her mark in the form of pictures on the psychologist’s desk and on a shelf on the bookcase.

“What brings you here?” In her office, Sam took the upholstered chair while directing them to the sofa as if they were a couple in for marriage counseling.

Joshua took the lead.

Not wanting to waste her time with the details of how they had come to this point in their case Joshua told her that he was working on another case for a client in Chester, and had come upon the case of Charley Halston’s disappearance. “I’m wondering if they could be connected in some way. Can you give me more information?”

Instead of launching into the details of her sister’s disappearance, she asked him, “What kind of case are you working on that Charley’s name came up?”

Cameron and Joshua exchanged glances before turning back to the doctor.

“Murder,” he finally answered.

“Why kind of murder?” Her counter question was quick.

“I can’t really go into the details.”

“Charley disappeared in New York.”

Cameron said, “We suspect we found a witness who may know something about Charley’s disappearance. But before we can pursue it, we need more details about how she disappeared.”

“What witness?”

“We can’t say. It’s an active investigation.” Cameron concluded it wasn’t really a lie. Even though the Rachel Burke case was closed, Cameron’s unofficial investigation was active.

This seemed to satisfy Dr. Sam Halston.

“Charley had gone to Syracuse with some friends for the football game. It was October in 1996. Pittsburgh won. They all went out clubbing in Syracuse to celebrate after the game. Charley didn’t come home. No one has seen her ever since.”

Now it was time to connect some dots. “Who were her friends?” Joshua sat on the edge of the sofa to wait for her answer, which came quickly.

“Her best friends. Susan Burke. Susan’s sister Rachel, and Linda Rogers. It’s now Pryor, Senator Pryor.”

Cameron grasped his arm. This is it! This is the Charley they were fighting about in the recording.

Sam said, “Charley never should have gone out with them.”

“Why do you say that?” Joshua sat so much closer that he threatened to fall off the sofa onto his rump on the floor.

“Charley had problems.” She gestured at the office and the clinic. “She’s why I’m here today.” She stared at one of the pictures she had of her sister on the desk. “Charley was what most people nowadays would call a drama queen. She was emotional, but it was more than that. Her highs where higher than other girls and her lows were lower. Back then, no one had any idea that she had a serious problem.”

“Charley was bi-polar,” Cameron said.

Sam nodded. “Not knowing what her problem was, with no one to help her other than to offer a shoulder for her to cry on and asking her to calm down when she was manic, she tried self-medicating as best she could. By that I mean drinking or taking pills or smoking pot. A lot of times, she was out of control, like she was that night in Syracuse.”

“What happened in Syracuse?” Joshua asked. “Who told you what happened?”

“Susan Burke,” Sam said. “They were best friends. Charley was studying theater and communications. She had interviewed Ronald Pryor on her radio show here on campus and they started having a fling. Susan had warned her that it was a mistake. He was dating Linda. They were serious, as serious as you can be when you’re cheating on your fiancée. He was going to marry Linda. They were going to be a power couple. But Charley bought all the lies about him loving her. Then, here, the four of them went up to Syracuse together and after the game they went out clubbing.”

Cameron asked, “She rode up to Syracuse with the girlfriend of the guy she was sleeping with? I can imagine that ride.”

“Charley wasn’t wrapped too tight before she started drinking on that trip.”

“When did it all come apart?”

“At their third club after the game. According to Susan, Ronald was paying attention to Linda. Charley was drunk, plus she was in one of her manic moods. She started a fight with Ronald for not telling Linda about them. the bartender threw them out. Rachel and Susan dragged her out of the club and put her in the car to take her home. Next thing Susan says she knew, Linda was in the car, too, and they were fighting in the back seat while Rachel was trying to drive back to the motel. Then, Charley was climbing over the front seat to grab the wheel out of Rachel’s hands away. They almost crashed. Rachel hit the brakes and Charley got out –where they could not remember—and refused to get back in the car. It was close to one o’clock in the morning and they were in downtown Syracuse. Linda ordered Rachel to leave her there. Rachel drove away—leaving Charley there on the street.”

“I don’t believe it,” Joshua breathed in disbelief. “They left her there.”

With the steadiness that comes with acceptance, Sam said, “Susan told me that she knew Charley had money and expected her to get a cab to take her back to the motel. Only problem is, in her condition, it was doubtable if she could remember where they were staying. As soon as she got back to the motel and Linda was out of the car, Susan turned the car around and went back to find Charley, but she was gone.” She let out a breath that, in spite of the passage of years, contained a whimper. “No one ever saw her again.”

“Have you ever talked to Senator Pryor about what she thinks happened to Charley?” Cameron asked.

“She’s made it very clear that she doesn’t ever want to talk to me about it anymore.” Sam added, “Senator Pryor is not the most compassionate of people. She has a six foot wall, complete with guard dogs and motion sensors, built around her heart. No one gets in.”

“That cold, huh?” Cameron asked.

Sam nodded her head with a smile. “I used to be angry with her for refusing to help me find Charley. Now, treating students here, I have come to feel sorry for her. She must be a miserable person. As smart as she is, she has to know that she’s married to a dog.”

“The wife only pretends to be the last to know,” Joshua said. “What about the police in Syracuse? Have they been any help?”

She paused, “In two-thousand and five, they found a serial killer that was targeting streetwalkers in downtown Syracuse. He would keep them captive in his house for months until he got tired of them and then he would kill them and bury them in his basement. I expected the police to call me to tell me that Charley was one of his victims. When they didn’t call me, I called them. They didn’t think so. Charley disappeared about three years before the first murder this guy confessed to.

“It’s funny.” She shrugged. “While I was relieved to find out that she didn’t suffer through months of being kept chained up like an animal, I wished it was her so that I would know what had happened. Then it would have been over.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Joshua said.

She looked over at him. Now it was the man on the doctor’s sofa that was being asked the question by the doctor. “Do you really think it’s possible to find out after all these years what happened to Charley?”

He cocked his head at her. “When you set your mind to it, there’s nothing you can’t do. I’ve found that to be true.”

“That’s better than what most people offer me,” she said.

“Linda Pryor killed Rachel Burke because guilt was eating at her and she was about to spill the beans about Linda killing Charley Halston,” Cameron said during their long drive down the turnpike to home. “Not only that, but Rachel was having an affair with her husband, which is the same reason Linda killed Charley.”

“Now all we have to do is prove it,” Joshua said. “We still don’t have a positive ID on the body found in the Allegheny Mountains and I guarantee that no one is going to get anywhere near Senator Pryor without any evidence. Right now, we have none.”

Cameron was studying the screen on her smart phone. “We will. That’s the beauty of 5Gs. I already sent a message to the Syracuse police to match the dental records they have on file for Charlene Halston to the Jane Doe in the Allegheny Mountains. Nowadays, with computers, they should be able to do the comparison in no time.”

“Time is running out,” Joshua told her. “Gina Robb’s body is shutting down, but she won’t give a do not resuscitate order until she knows I’ve found out who framed and killed Billy.”

“Linda Pryor has all kinds of political power,” Cameron said. “She must have known about Billy threatening Rachel after she fired him.”

“Do we know that for sure?” Joshua turned to look at her, while keeping one eye on the road. “She didn’t work at the salon. She was on the campaign trail. Remember, this was September 2001. Election was only a couple of months away. Would Linda Pryor have bothered knowing about a little gopher in Rachel Burke’s salon? Why go to the trouble of framing and killing him? Why not just let Rachel Burke’s murder look like a break-in gone wrong?”

“The circumstantial evidence points to Senator Linda Pryor,” Cameron said. “She has the juice to be able to get her people to cover this up.”

“I certainly think Senator Pryor is capable of killing Rachel Burke,” Joshua said. “From the recording, Rachel and Susan were deathly afraid of her.”

Cameron went on to explained, “Susan Burke was there with her sister Rachel and Pryor when Charley Halston disappeared. Pryor says right there in the recording, mention Charley’s name again and she’d end up the same way she did. The next day, Rachel is stabbed to death. The Allegheny National Forest is on the way home from Syracuse. After killing Charley, they threw her body in the trunk of the car and dumped it in the mountains for the bears to finish off. Then, they made up this cock-in-bull story about her disappearing a state away. Everyone is looking for her in New York, when she is really hours away in Pennsylvania.”

Joshua nodded his head as it came together in his mind. “After Rachel’s murdered, Angela digs up a report about a Jane Doe found in the mountains based on what she had overheard in the recording.”

“Being a hair’s breadth from the Senate seat,” Cameron said, “Linda Pryor couldn’t risk Angela ruining everything. When Angela refused to buy Ellicott’s take on what happened, Linda ordered him to make her go away.”

Joshua’s cell phone vibrated to cut off their conversation. Cameron checked the caller ID. It read Tad. “Hey, Doc,” she called into the speaker phone.

“Where are you two?” Tad asked.

“We’re on the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” she answered. “What’s up?”

“Your house got broken into.”

On this news, Joshua pulled over. “Was anything taken?”

Tad’s response was a laugh. “No.”

“What’s so funny?” Joshua failed to see the humor.

Tad said, “Well, you know how you complain that Admiral is so lazy that if someone broke in, he would sleep through it? A little while ago, I’m in the kitchen in our house next door, making myself a sandwich, and suddenly, I hear a gunshot and all hell breaks loose. I look outside just in time to see this guy running across your back yard with a skunk cat on top of his head and a one-hundred-and-fifty pound dog attached to his butt! He didn’t even make it to the road before he collapsed. By the time I got there, Admiral had shredded his pants down to his knees and Irving made his head look like it had been run through a food processor.”

“Is Irving okay?” Cameron gushed. Judging by Tad’s laugh, the skunk cat was fine.

“Did you call the sheriff?” Joshua asked.

“Yeah, they got the guy and took him to the hospital. Irving and Admiral refused to get off him until Sheriff Sawyer came.” Tad turned serious. “You’ll never believe who the guy was.”

“Who?” Joshua was thinking of any number of young men who had been friends of any of his children.

“A Pennsylvania State cop,” Tad said. “Badge and everything. His driver’s license says his name is Ralph Ellicott. He was carrying a gun, too. I don’t think he was breaking in to steal anything.”

Cameron jabbed Joshua in the arm. “I was right.”

“We know about Charley.”

Susan Burke opened the front door of her home to find Joshua Thornton leaning in the doorway. Wearing her badge and gun, Cameron was directly behind him.

“We have Ralph Ellicott sitting in a jail cell in Hancock County, West Virginia, after breaking into my home,” Joshua said. “He had a throw away gun on him. I’m thinking someone sent him to shut me and my wife up. Plus, Charley Halston’s body was found in the Allegheny Mountains, not far from where you and your sister and Linda Pryor had driven through on your way home from Syracuse.”

“We also have a recording where Rachel as much as threatened to tell the truth about Charley,” Cameron added. “Everything is on its way to coming out.”

“If you don’t want to be taken away from your son and sent to jail for being an accessory,” Joshua said, “now is the time to start talking.”

Susan regarded them both. “You say you have a recording where Rachel was wanting to tell the truth?”

Cameron nodded her head. “A journalist had accidentally recorded the fight you and Rachel and Linda had at Rachel’s Labor Day party.”

“Where Linda confronted Rachel about her affair with her husband,” Joshua clarified.

“Oh,” Susan said. “I guess it is time for the truth to come out.” She stepped back to invite them inside. “Please sit down.”

Joshua and Cameron sat on the sofa across from her.

While they waited in silence, Susan brought her hands up to her face. Tears came to her eyes. Finally, she spoke, “Charley was my best friend. She was wacky. Fun, and different from everyone else. She also believed everyone was like her. Since she would never lie, then she didn’t think other people would either. Ronald Pryor had seduced her into an affair, when he had no intention of leaving Linda. But he told her he loved her and she believed him, even when everyone told her what a fool she was. We all went up to Syracuse, New York, for a big football game, and Charley confronted Ronald in a club to tell Linda that he loved her. Linda attacked her. A fight broke out and we all got tossed out of the club. We were in the car trying to get back to the hotel and Rachel was trying to drive, when Charley went nuts because Linda was tearing her hair out in the back seat of the car. Rachel pulled over because she was going to wreck. The fight spilled out into the street, and—It was over.” She paused to wipe the tears from her eyes. “Linda bashed in Charley’s skull with a brick she found on the side of the road.”

They were lost in their thoughts watching her.

“Everything after that was like in a fog,” she said in a soft voice. “We were just standing over Charley looking at her lying with her head in a pool of blood on the sidewalk while Linda was snapping orders at us to wrap up her body—fast—put her in the trunk of the car and for us to get out of there. The next morning, Linda called the police to say that our friend was missing. They never even offered to look in the trunk of our car. The next day, on the way home, we went to the Allegheny Forest to dump her body on the way home.”

She stopped talking to suck in a deep breath. Her eyes were glazing over.

“When I found Rachel’s body, I knew. I just knew it was Linda,” Susan said. “When she wants something ...”

“My client wants it on record that she is here voluntarily,” her lawyer tapped his finger on the table top in front of Cameron as she stepped inside.

“We are as anxious to get this misunderstanding cleared up as the media,” Senator Linda Pryor smoothed the front of her red suit and peered at her reflection in the two-way mirror. The years had not been kind to her. Her firm serious expression had frozen to give her a gaunt, unpleasant appearance.

“Ralph Ellicott is telling us that your client gave him orders to kill my husband and me for asking too many questions about Rachel Burke’s murder,” Cameron began.

“That’s a lie,” the Senator said. “I told him to end your investigation. I didn’t tell him to kill anyone.”

“Did he contact you about my visit with him?” Cameron said. “The one where I asked him about the lack of physical evidence placing Billy Robb on the scene of Rachel Burke’s murder. Yet, we have two witnesses who said you were fighting with Rachel Burke just one day before her murder.”

“Your witnesses are mistaken,” Linda said. “I had no reason to kill Rachel.”

“I’d call sleeping with your husband and threatening to go to the police to tell them about you committing murder a big motive,” Cameron countered.

“Your witnesses are full of it,” Linda tapped her finger on the table. “One, I never killed anyone, anywhere, anytime. Two, Rachel was not sleeping with my husband, therefore I didn’t get into any fight with her about sleeping with my husband.”

“Not according—”

“Susan was sleeping with my husband,” Linda said. “And yes, I did get into her face about it the day before Rachel was killed. That slut and my pig of a husband embarrassed the hell out of me. They went running off on a bike ride and Susan comes back with her arm all banged up and they tried to tell me this lie about her falling off the bike. If Ronald is going to be sneaking around with my being Senator, the least he could do is become a better liar.” Uttering a sigh of disgust, Linda crossed one leg over the other and rolled her eyes.

Cameron gazed at her while trying to piece together what the senator had said. She could sense Joshua doing the same in the observation room behind her. Finally, she found her voice to asked, “Susan messed up her arm.”

“Yes,” Linda said with a note of annoyance. “Sprained it or something. Somehow while they were going at it like a couple of horny rabbits—”

“Susan, not Rachel?”

“Yes, it was Susan that Ronald was sleeping with … at that time!” Linda said. “He did have a fling with Rachel off and on all through college. I think he was even in love with her for a while.” With a smirk, she announced, “But my family had more power and money. I’m not stupid. I know that’s why he stays around. All I ask of him is that he be discreet.”

“Was Rachel sleeping with Ronald at that time?” Cameron asked.

Linda shrugged. “You have to ask him.”

Cameron slammed her folder shut. She started to get up to leave, but stopped to ask, “Who killed Charley Halston?”

Linda gazed at her. Her eyes narrowed. “My temper is infamous.”

“I know.”

“That’s okay,” the senator said. “I don’t let it brew beneath the surface to let go off like a volcano—like someone I used to know.”

“Who was that someone?”

“Rachel Burke. I have no doubt that’s what got her killed. Susan probably killed her in self-defense after I spilled the beans about her and Ronald. I guess you probably already figured out that Susan’s son, Tyler, is Ronald’s.” She smirked. “Of course, if you go to the media about that, I will deny it.”

“Let’s say,” Cameron said, “I believe you that you didn’t kill Rachel Burke, then why go to such lengths to end any investigation into her murder?”

“Because Susan Burke is a weak link,” Linda said. “For years after Charley was killed, Susan kept saying that we should tell what happened to bring her family closure.” Her face screwed up when she scoffed, “Like it was going to bring Charley back to them or something—whatever.”

“Do you mean you had Ellicott kill Angela Jarvis because you knew she was getting close to uncovering you killing Charley Halston?”

While her lawyer objected, the senator sat up straight in her chair. “I did not order any murders! I only ordered that Ellicott use whatever means necessary to make people see the wisdom of doing things my way! Besides—I didn’t know Angela Jarvis was anywhere near finding out about Charley Halston. After Rachel was killed, I know she went to see Susan. I guess since it was Rachel who killed Charley, and she was now dead, Susan saw no use in revealing what her twin had done anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Susan then assured me that she didn’t want to ruin Rachel’s memory by revealing that she had killed Charley.”

“Of course, you’d say that,” Cameron said. “Why should I believe you?”

“It was my car,” Linda said while pointing at herself. “I was driving. Rachel and Charley were fighting in the back seat—”

“Over Ronald?”

“No,” Linda laughed. “I knew about Ronald and Charley. Big whoop. He was marrying me.”

“What were Rachel and Charley fighting over?”

“Charley had too much to drink and ripped Rachel’s dress,” Linda said. “After getting us thrown out of the club, that was the final straw. I told you, Rachel has a temper and when her temper blows …”

“Are you arresting Linda?” Susan Burke asked when Joshua and Cameron returned to her home.

Ignoring her question, Joshua asked casually, “Lovely weather we’ve been having this summer, isn’t it?”

She narrowed her eyes as she peered from him to Cameron.

“We really aren’t that far from the mountain where you dumped your best friend Charley’s body,” Joshua said. “I’m sorry. My mistake. Charley was not your best friend. She was Susan’s best friend.”

“She must have been an annoyance to you,” Cameron said, “with her bipolar disorder.”

“What are you talking about?” She flipped her red curls over her shoulder.

Joshua shook his head. “You had us fooled. You had everyone fooled. Being identical twins—”

“But then,” Cameron said, “you two weren’t totally identical in every way.”

“I have twins,” Joshua said. “No two people are completely identical. Environment and personalities shift. One is serious, like Susan was. Has compassion, like Susan did. The other was the beauty queen with a little less depth—and a temper that can turn murderous at the snap of the fingers.” He snapped his fingers in her face. “Like it did that night that Charley Halston tore your expensive cocktail dress after getting you and your friends kicked out of a club for starting a fight with Linda over Ronald.”

“If Linda told you that,” she said in a low voice, “she’s lying.”

“Maybe,” Joshua said. “But we do have confirmation from the Syracuse police where the missing person’s report was filed after Charley disappeared that it was Linda’s car, not yours that you girls were driving that weekend.”

“Which means that most likely Linda was telling the truth about it being her who was driving,” Cameron said. “You were in the back seat with Charley. She was out of control. She tore your expensive dress. You flipped out and killed her. Now you had a problem. This was October, 1996, the same year that you were Miss Pennsylvania. It would have looked really bad if you went down for killing one of your friends while having a hissy fit.”

“It already looked bad getting thrown out of club,” Rachel said in a frightfully low voice. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Her mouth drew tight.

“No matter who’s telling the truth about killing Charley,” Joshua said, “Both you and Senator Pryor are going down for her murder. One of you killed her, while the other was an accessory in covering it up.”

“We do know that the senator isn’t lying about it being Susan that she had discovered having an affair with her husband,” Cameron said. “That means it was Susan who you killed, Rachel. When Linda called her on the affair in front of you, you realized that your sister was sleeping with your lover. Ronald wasn’t just cheating on his wife; he was cheating on his mistress.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Tyler’s birthday is in March 2002,” Joshua said. “We checked. That means you were two months pregnant when you discovered Ronald was cheating on you with your sister. They had both played you for a fool.”

“So the next day,” Cameron said, “you dressed up in men’s clothes—probably some clothes that Ronald had left at your place—and you lured Susan to the salon after she had a rendezvous with your lover.”

“The autopsy indicated that she had sex shortly before you killed her,” Joshua said.

“You’re right there,” Rachel said with a small smile. “I followed him from the club to her house. They spent the whole afternoon in bed—laughing about what a fool they made of me and Linda.” She let out a laugh. “I had the last laugh on her.”

“You planned the whole thing,” Joshua said.

“The fact that you dressed up in men’s clothes before killing her points to premeditation,” Cameron said. “Then, you went over to Billy Robb’s boarding room to frame him for the murder.”

“Billy was the perfect patsy,” Joshua said. “He had already threatened to kill you.”

Cameron finished, “You held a gun to his head and made him put on the clothes with Susan’s blood on them, and then you killed him all to cover up your murder.”

“Then you went back to the salon and called the police,” Joshua said. “You identified her body as Rachel, who Billy had a motive to murder. That’s why you switched identities. No one thought to check to see if you were telling the truth.”

“With less make up and a quieter demeanor,” Cameron said, “everyone believed you were Susan—until Linda Pryor told us about Susan hurting her arm the day before the murder. She had a hairline fracture which the ME noted in the autopsy.”

Joshua said, “We checked with a few guests who were at your Labor Day party. They all remember it was Susan who hurt her arm, not Rachel. Since the broken arm was never made public, no one noticed it until Linda told us.

Rachel Burke stared at them. Fire came to her eyes. “She was my sister. The plain one. I know we were identical, but I was the beautiful one. I was always the one with the boyfriends. I was the popular one. She knew that. And for her to steal Ronald from me—How could she betray me like that?” Her pouty lips curled in a snarl. “She made a fool of me! It made me so mad! I wanted to kill her!”

“So you did.” Joshua took out his cell phone to call Billy’s mother while Cameron read Rachel Burke her rights and handcuffed her.

Gina Robb died in peace one hour later.

The End

COUNTDOWN TO MURDER

A LOVERS IN CRIME MYSTERY SHORT

What did people do before ATMs were invented? Same thing they did before God invented credit cards. They only bought what they had the money to buy …

Cameron grimaced at her reflection in her SUV’s rearview mirror. Her greenish-brown eyes narrowed to accentuate the laugh lines in the corner of her eyes.

I sound like my mother. Am I really that old? Isn’t forty supposed to be the new thirty, which used to be middle-aged? Not anymore. If I’m so young, why do I sound like my mother?

Ordering herself to get on with it, Cameron climbed out of her car and went into the ATM booth next to the shopping center in Robinson Township, outside Pittsburgh. She slipped her card into the slot and punched in the PIN number.

Quick cash? Then I’ll be back here in a couple of days. But then, I don’t like carrying lots of cash. Ah, just go for the whole hundred bucks.

She hit the button for a hundred dollars.

The booth’s door opened and closed.

In the mirror concealing the security camera, she saw the man pull the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head to hide his face before he pushed up against her. Along with the odor of sweat and cigarettes, she felt the pressure of a gun against her side.

Without turning around, she asked his reflection in the mirror, “Seriously?”

“Give me your money.” He moved in closer so that she could feel his hot, foul breath steaming up her short wavy brown hair.

“This is why I hate ATMs,” she told whoever would be viewing the security footage.

Laughing, the desk sergeant at the state police barracks in Robinson Township stood up from where he was bent over a schedule when he saw Homicide Detective Cameron Gates barge through the doors with a suspect in handcuffs. She had pulled down the black hood on his jacket to reveal his bloody ears and nose.

“Help!” the attempted thief screamed out. “This bitch is crazy!”

After shoving the suspect up against the desk, Cameron slapped the gun she had taken from him down in front of the sergeant. “Here’s your ATM bandit.”

“I’m filing a complaint!” the thief told the sergeant. “Police brutality. She ripped my ear plugs right out of my earlobes—not to mention what she did to my balls. I tell you, if I end up being impotent, it’s her fault. There’s laws against using Tazers there! If there aren’t, there should be. I want a lawyer!”

“Get in line,” Cameron said.

“I never would have tried to rob her if I had known she was a crazy cop!” the thief told the desk sergeant. “Isn’t that entrapment?”

“Not a cop,” the desk sergeant told him. “Homicide detective.” He clasped the thief by the shoulder. “We have a half dozen victims waiting to see you in lineup.” He turned to Cameron. “You know the drill. Let’s get that gun into evidence.” He took the thief and gun away to booking.

Once they were gone, Cameron noticed a woman sitting alone at a desk belonging to one of the troopers on duty. While it was not unusual for a citizen to be filing a complaint in the squad room, as well as sobbing; it was an unusual sight to see a pregnant woman with a bag filled with black dead roses.

There’s got to be a story here.

Cameron stepped over to the woman. “Hello, are you being helped?”

With wide tear-filled eyes, the young woman looked up at the detective, dressed in a black pant suit, with a gold detective’s badge clipped to her belt. On the other hip, she wore her 9-mm Colt semi-automatic. “Are you a detective?”

“I’m Detective Cameron Gates.” She pulled up a chair and sat down. “And you are …”

“Tiffany Ambrose.” She shook the detective’s hand.

“Boyfriend problems?” Cameron nodded her head in the direction of the roses.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” When Tiffany saw Cameron’s eyebrow arch, she grasped her bulging stomach. “My husband died four months ago. He was in the Navy and killed in a helicopter accident in Afghanistan. He was only supposed to be over there thirty days.” She hung her head. “Now he’s gone forever.”

“I’m sorry,” Cameron said. “My husband is a retired Navy guy. My step-son is a Navy ensign and stationed at the Pentagon.”

Tiffany wiped her eyes. “Jeff was planning to make Navy his career. His getting killed is the worst thing that could have ever happened to me. My mother never married and I swore that I wasn’t going to live like her. I’ve always lived my life on the straight and narrow. Jeff and I never drank. We didn’t do drugs. We were planning to give our child a good strong stable environment. That helicopter accident ruined my—our whole lives.”

“I can imagine.”

While Cameron waited for her to go on with what had brought her into the police station, the two women sat in silence.

Eventually, Tiffany picked up the grocery bag filled with the dead roses and held them out to the detective. “Someone is stalking me. I have this horrible feeling that he’s going to kill me and my baby.”

“Who’s stalking you?”

“I have no idea,” Tiffany said. “I don’t even know anyone here.”

“How did you end up here if you don’t know anyone?” Cameron asked.

“I thought it was a blessing,” Tiffany said. “A couple of weeks after Jeff got killed, I got this e-mail from a human resources lady at Epic Technologies. Somehow, they had gotten my resume and the company president, Stan Frost, was looking for an executive assistant. The salary and benefits were unbelievable. I told them that I was pregnant and they said it didn’t matter. He even offered six months maternity leave.”

“Even though you were already pregnant when they offered you the job?”

Tiffany nodded her head. “They paid my moving costs and found me a nice single family house in a great neighborhood. I thought it was all an answer to my prayers until these dead roses start showing up on my doorstep with these sick notes.”

Cameron peered inside the bag at the long stem dead roses. She counted eleven roses. “Is this all that you have received?”

“One has been on my welcome mat when I have come home from work every day. There’s a note tied to it with a black ribbon.”

“Every night?”

Tiffany nodded her head. “The notes are getting worse every day. I’m scared to go home.”

Cameron reached inside to take out the stack of plain white cards. She read the first note:

Roses are Dead,

Violets are Blue,

In Twelve Days, you will be dead, too.

“Slumming, Gates?” the trooper asked when he returned to his desk. An older, career patrolman with a buzz cut, he glared a warning for the detective to not be poaching his case.

“I was just giving the ATM Bandit a ride here in the back of my cruiser.” She handed Tiffany the rose with its card. “Ms. Ambrose looked like she could use some help.”

“Which is what I’m giving her.” He handed Tiffany a report. “You can sign this complaint and we’ll make sure a patrol car keeps tabs in your neighborhood.”

Eying the report, Tiffany looked up to Cameron. “Is that all?”

“This sicko is making death threats,” the detective said.

“His latest note said three days.” Tiffany dug out the rose with the latest note attached to it in black ribbon. “In three days, he’s going to kill me and my baby.”

“Has he broken into your home?”

“Not yet.”

“No direct contact? You can’t even give me a name of who to question.”

“So after he attacks me and I ask him his name, then you’ll help me?” The tears on Tiffany’s face shone brightly against her red face.

“Right now,” the patrolman said, “all you have is vague threats.”

“I wouldn’t call a written count down a vague threat,” Cameron said.

His glare ordered the detective to stay out of the conversation. “It’s most likely some warped bored teenager who lives in your neighborhood getting his jollies by upsetting you.”

Sobbing, Tiffany Ambrose gathered up the roses in the grocery bag. “I told Mr. Frost that this would all be a big waste of time. I was right. I wish I was wrong. When it’s too good to be true, it usually is. I never should have left Norfolk.”

Sobbing, she ran out of the squad room and was gone.

Cameron tore her eyes from the door through which the desperate woman had run to the patrolman, who rolled his eyes as a comment. Women!

Men! Cameron thought in reply.

“What would you do, Gates?” the officer called after her when she got up to leave.

“My job,” she replied. “Find the guy and stop him.”

Countdown to murder. Is that really such a unique Modes Operand?

Her morning hours occupied with paperwork, Cameron’s mind kept straying back to Tiffany Ambrose and her tearful exit. While the trooper were right in some aspects, a nagging pang in the detective’s gut kept telling her that there was more to this case than a youthful prank to scare a pregnant widow.

While eating her tuna fish sandwich and bag of chips, Cameron took a couple of minutes to do a search of the crime database for similar MOs of stalkers or killers leaving a single dead rose daily for their intended victims leading up to the murder.

The search produced an extensive list.

Okay. Let’s narrow it down. She typed in the search for “A dead rose, plus a threat in the form of a poem.”

That reduced it some.

“A dead rose, plus a threat with D-day being on the thirteenth day.”

The list was reduced to one: Eddie Palmer. Suspected in two murders. Convicted in one.

Now that’s more like it. While munching on the chips, She read:

Victim One was his girlfriend, who was found murdered on the thirteenth day after receiving a dead rose daily for twelve days. She received threatening poems along with the roses. Police suspected but was unable to pin the murder on Palmer, who left their small Kansas town and enlisted in the Marines.

Five years later, his then pregnant girlfriend started receiving roses with threatening poems. Thirteen days later, she was found murdered. Stabbed to death like girlfriend Number One.

Cameron sat up in her seat. This has to be the guy! She continued to read.

Eddie Palmer was arrested and, since the victim was enlisted in the Marines, tried in military court for murder. Found guilty.

It can’t be. He must have gotten out and be up to his old tricks again.

Eddie Palmer died in prison eight years ago.

It can’t be. Our guy must be a copycat!

Cameron scanned the names in the case file for the investigator and those connected with the case. One of them had to be involved with Tiffany Ambrose, whose late husband was also in the military, to be terrorizing her.

She found a name that jumped out at her from the computer monitor.

Lead Prosecutor: Joshua Thornton, Judge Advocate General.

Also known as Cameron Gates’ husband. Well, at least I know where to find him.

“Hello, handsome,” Cameron purred into the phone when Joshua Thornton, Hancock County’s prosecuting attorney, across the state line from her jurisdiction, answered the phone.

“You’re late,” he said.

Wondering if she had forgotten about a lunch date with her husband, Cameron snatched her cell phone and checked the calendar. “Late for what?”

“Our lunch time bootie call.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Usually, when we don’t meet for lunch, you call at noon and talk dirty to me. But it’s now almost one o’clock.” He uttered an exaggerated sigh. “I guess the honeymoon is over.”

“I was working,” she explained about her encounter with Tiffany Ambrose in the squad room. “I’d like, for once, to catch a killer before he hits the victim.”

Joshua’s tone turned serious. “How can I help?”

“Tell me about Eddie Palmer.”

There was silence from the other end of the line. “Why are you asking about him?” he finally asked. “He can’t be your guy. He’s dead.”

“Maybe he had a friend or fan who’s emulating him,” she suggested. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the similarities between Tiffany’s circumstance and Eddie Palmer’s murders.”

“Eddie Palmer killed women who he had impregnated,” Joshua said. “The father of Tiffany’s baby died in Afghanistan. The only similarity is the roses and threats in the form of poems. I don’t think that’s such an original MO. Look elsewhere.”

Cameron was grasping. “Can you at least check to see if anyone connected with Eddie Palmer or his case could be using his MO? Look to see if there’s a connection between anyone connected to him and Tiffany Ambrose. Even a cell mate from when he was in prison.”

“His cellmate killed him. He’s still in jail,” Joshua replied. “But I’ll check. Only because I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Cameron had no sooner hung up and the direct line on her phone rang. The caller ID read Stan Frost. Where do I know that name? Tiffany’s boss. The owner of Epic Technologies.

She answered the phone. “Detective Cameron Gates.”

“Detective Gates, are you the detective that talked to Tiffany Ambrose this morning when she went in to report her stalker?” For a rich man, Cameron noted an urgent tone is his voice. He didn’t sound as smooth talking as most rich folks she encountered in her job. “Stan Frost,” he replied. “Tiffany Ambrose is my … executive assistant.”

The detective’s ears perked up when she heard him pause before saying that she was his executive assistant. What were you going to say, Mr. Frost? She fought to keep from asking. Lover? But then, Cameron recalled that Tiffany was pregnant when she accepted the job hundreds of miles away and in another state, away from her family and friends. But then, some men love pregnant women.

“Tiffany just called me,” he said. “She had a doctor’s appointment and has been so upset. So she went home early and that sicko left her another rose and note. She had told me about how you tried to help, so I contacted the police department to track you down. Please. I’m a very wealthy man. I can pay you very well. Can you please help? Can you catch this guy?”

“What did the note say on the rose?”

“She didn’t read the whole poem to me,” he said. “She only read the highlight. Two more days before he kills her.”

Lieutenant Dugan, Cameron’s boss, was a by-the-book type. Their squad was homicide. Tiffany Ambrose was not dead. Therefore, her problem was not theirs. However, as Cameron had hoped, he saw no reason not to bend the rules in an effort to prevent a homicide instead of waiting for it to happen before taking on the case.

“How much comp time do you have?” Dugan asked the detective.

“You know that,” she replied.

“Take it,” he ordered. “Let’s be proactive for once.”

Cameron was on her way to her cruiser in five minutes. She had no sooner climbed inside before her phone was ringing.

“I called the prison,” Joshua reported. “Palmer had no visitors, friends, or family. No correspondence outside the prison. Nothing. No warped fans. We kept our cases very close to the vest in JAG. Rarely would we let our cases make the news.”

“Maybe it is someone who was connected with the case,” Cameron said. “Jury—”

“It was a trial in a military court,” Joshua said. “We aren’t talking about common citizens who are taken off the streets. These people had years of military experience, plus psychological examinations. If any of them were psychopaths, it would have come out before they were put on a military panel.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that our proposed victim is pregnant. Her late husband was a Navy officer—”

“Palmer was an enlisted man in the Marines,” Joshua said. “Big difference.”

“Tiffany came from Norfolk, which is where Eddie Palmer’s second murder took place. Plus, the killer is using Eddie Palmer’s MO.” Cameron asked, “Do you really buy that there’s no connection, Josh?”

“Do you want me to come out there?” It sounded like a threat made by a parent nagged into submission by a strong-willed child.

“Yes,” she replied. “Meet me at Epic Technologies. Top floor. Stan Frost, president’s office.”

As hard as she tried, when she did, Cameron could not stop the smile that crossed her face when she saw “her silver fox”, Joshua Thornton, enter the lobby on the ground floor of Epic Technologies.

Even while making the transition from mid-to-late forties, Joshua Thornton was one of the most attractive men in the room with his head of silver hair that fell to touch the top of his trench coat’s collar. The transition from auburn hair to silver happened during his five children’s teenaged years. Now only one teenager was left at home.

“What’s your plan?” Joshua asked her after a quick hug and kiss in front of the elevators.

“Identify our suspects and see who has a connection to Eddie Palmer,” she replied. “We don’t have a lot of time left. The last note our killer left said Tiffany had only two days left.” She did not like the grimace that crossed his face. “What?”

“Murder Investigation One-Oh-One,” Joshua said. “Start with the victim.” With his hand blocking the closing of the doors, he held open the elevator door for her to step on before him.

“Right now we don’t have a murder victim,” Cameron said. “We want to keep it that way.”

“Find out who will benefit the most with Tiffany Ambrose out of the way, and that path will lead you to your Dead Rose Killer.”

“Who, I guarantee will have a connection to Eddie Palmer,” she said.

The doors shut and the elevator began its climb to the top floor and Stan Frost’s suite of offices.

“Want to bet?” Joshua asked.

Intrigued, Cameron turned to him. “What do you want to bet?”

“Whether or not our killer has any connection to Eddie Palmer or not,” he said. “If I’m right and the killer has no connection, I win. If the killer does, you win.”

“And what do I win?” A naughty smile crossed her face as she rested her hand around his waist and moved in closer to him. She gazed up into his blue eyes.

He wrapped his arms around her. “Loser gets to be the winner’s love slave for one evening.”

“A bet where there’s no losers? I can get into that type of betting.” She pushed him up against the wall of the elevator and kissed him.

They were in a tight embrace when the elevator doors flew up. At the sound of a woman’s loud gasp, they parted and proceeded to straighten their coats.

A woman dressed in a severe looking gray business suit, which contrasted with her long blond hair and dangerous looking high heels stepped onto the elevator. She clutched a leather binder to her chest. In spite of the humor that Cameron found in the interruption, the new passenger cast a firm glare upon the two of them. She tore her eyes from them to check the buttons for the floor. Her expression turned from chastising to shock. “You’re getting off at the twelfthth floor?”

“Yes.” Cameron smirked at the corporate blonde’s disbelief.

The business woman looked the detective up and down.

Cameron was not your average fast track employee in the world of hi-tech. “We have an appointment with Mr. Frost.” The detective opened her jacket to give her a glimpse of her badge and gun.

Her eyes wide, the woman looked from Cameron to Joshua, who was more befitting the corporate image. The elevator doors opened and the blonde hurried off as fast as her high-heels could carry her.

“That really wasn’t necessary,” Joshua whispered to Cameron.

“I know but it was too much fun to pass up.” She noticed a smirk on his face as he peered down the corridor where the blonde had escaped. “What? I didn’t know you were into corporate types.”

“I’m not.” Joshua took her arm.

“Then why the grin?”

“I was in the military for a very long time,” he said. “I’ve gotten so that I can spot an ex-military from a mile away.”

“Her?” Cameron shook her head. “No.”

“The way they stand. The way they present themselves. Not only was she military, but she was an officer.”

“I wonder if she was a Marine and knew Eddie Palmer.”

“Palmer was enlisted,” Joshua said. “Unless she was his CO, I doubt it.”

They found the corporate blonde in the corner office suite that was home to Stan Frost. Arrogance replaced her fright. Upon seeing Cameron and Joshua stepping through the door, she announced over her shoulder to the administrative assistant behind the desk. “These detectives say they have an appointment with Mr. Frost.”

“Detective Cameron Gates?” the assistant asked in a congenial tone.

With a nod of her head, Cameron added, “And Joshua Thornton to see Mr. Frost and Ms. Ambrose.”

The assistant picked up the phone to announce their arrival.

The blonde told Joshua and Cameron in a challenging tone, “I have a right to know if any of our people are involved in police matters.” She offered her hand to Joshua, not Cameron. “Hannah Pickering. Vice-president in charge of human resources.”

Seeing Stan Frost coming out of his office, she turned on him. “Mr. Frost, why was I not informed that you had an appointment with the police? I had to find out by walking in on them having sex in the elevator.”

“We were not having sex in the elevator,” Cameron said. “We were groping each other. The elevator is too fast for a couple to complete a full sex act. Maybe you have it set that fast for that very reason. By the way—We’re allowed. We married—” She gestured back and forth between them. “—to each other.”

“Now that we’ve announced our personal business to everyone in hearing distance,” Joshua said, “can we get to the matter of our investigation?” Seeing the pregnant woman behind Stan Frost, he asked, “Is this Tiffany Ambrose?” He stepped forward to offer her his hand. “Joshua Thornton. Cameron has invited me to help her with this case.”

“What case?” Hannah objected. “You mean those stupid dead roses?” She turned to the corporate president. “I told you that this was all a prank pulled by some sicko.”

“Hannah, whoever it is, is threatening to kill Tiffany,” the gray-haired man said. “It’s upsetting and it’s not good for her to be upset in her condition.” He reached around her to shake Cameron’s hand. “Thank you so much for coming. Please come into my office. Whatever it takes to make sure Tiffany is safe …Money is no object.”

“If we’re going to have the police on the premises, then I recommend that I be allowed to sit in on this meeting,” Hannah said.

Stan Frost turned around to regard her with a hard glare that would make any employee remember their place.

“It is my duty to know what is going on with our employees,” Hannah repeated in a firm tone.

Cameron was surprised when the company president turned to Tiffany Ambrose to silently ask her reaction. Tiffany consented with a shrug followed by a nod of her head.

“Very well,” the president said before ushering them into his office.

Before following, Cameron turned to Joshua. “Did you see that?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t have your average boss and assistant relationship,” she said. “That’s for sure.”

The top floor corner office provided a view of the airport in the landscape. In addition to the desk and conference table, there was a sitting area where Stan Frost made sure Tiffany was comfortable on the sofa before sitting across from her.

Before taking their seats, Cameron and Joshua made a visual sweep of the office. Seeing no personal pictures of family mementoes, they exchanged glances before yielding to Stan Frost’s call for them to join him, Tiffany, and Hannah, who had taken a seat in the chair opposite the company president.

Cameron sat next to Tiffany while Joshua pulled up a chair to sit on the other side of the coffee table.

“Tiffany, I understand you started getting these roses almost two weeks ago?” Cameron took out her computer tablet to open to her notes application.

Tiffany nodded of her head. “I’ve been getting one a day for the last ten days.”

“Eleven,” Frost corrected her. “Today is day eleven.” He directed his gaze at Cameron. “He says in the notes that on the thirteenth day, he’s going to kill her. That’s the day after tomorrow.”

“We’re going to do everything we can to not let that happen.”

Joshua interrupted, “Can I see the notes that he has been sending her?”

“I made copies of every one.” Frost practically jumped out of his chair in reaching for a folder he had placed on the coffee table in front of him. He handed it to Joshua. “Sick psychopath.” As Joshua opened the folder, he corrected himself. “Except the last one that Tiffany called me about. She hasn’t brought it to me yet.”

“I have it in my briefcase,” Tiffany said.

“Can I see it?” Joshua asked.

With effort, Tiffany pulled up to get out of her seat until Hannah slapped her organizer shut and stood up. “I can get it for you,” she said. “Where is it?”

“My briefcase is in my office. On top of my desk.” With a tired sigh, Tiffany fell back in her seat.

Hannah, her organizer tucked under her arm, hurried out of the office. She left the door open.

“I think we should have the notes you received processed for fingerprints,” Joshua said.

“Sure,” Tiffany said. “I’ll make sure you get them.” She smiled over at Cameron. “The police officer this morning didn’t even offer to do that.”

“It isn’t every day that he runs into cases like this,” the detective said with a shrug. It was the best excuse she could come up with. “You had told me that you didn’t know anyone in this area when you moved here.”

“No one,” Tiffany replied. “I know it’s crazy, but the position that Mr. Frost offered me was simply too good to pass up.”

“Tiffany has been a treasured asset to my company.” Stan Frost cast her a wide grin. “She’s taken a load off my shoulders. She has a gift for making wise business decisions. That’s not something you learn. It’s something you’re born with.”

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Cameron asked, “how did you find Tiffany? She said that the offer was quite sudden.”

“I wasn’t even looking for a job,” Tiffany recalled with a high pitched giggle. “My husband had only just died. I was still reeling, not really sure what was going to become of me when Hannah sent me that e-mail.”

Joshua looked up from the notes he was reading to look over at Stan Frost. “Sounds like a real stroke of luck that you got such an offer out of the blue when you needed it so badly.”

“Tiffany has been an answer to my prayers.” Stan smiled over at her.

Casting a sly glance in Joshua’s direction, Cameron asked Tiffany, “Your husband was in the Navy.”

“He was a lieutenant,” she said.

“And you lived in Norfolk?”

“Ever since we got married four years ago,” Tiffany answered.

“Four years ago,” Joshua repeated. “The Palmer murder was twelve years ago. He died eight years ago. That’s four years before Tiffany and her husband moved into the area.”

“Who’s Eddie Palmer?” Tiffany asked in a worried tone.

Stan reached for her hand.

“A murderer who’s MO was the same as that of the guy threatening you,” Cameron said.

“Then maybe this Palmer guy wasn’t your killer,” Stan Frost said.

“Yes, he was.” Joshua cocked his head at Cameron while replying, “We did get the right guy.”

“Tiffany!” A plump young man dressed in ill-fitting khaki slacks and a sweater rushed into the office and over to where Tiffany was sitting. He hurtled Cameron, who was sitting in his way, before plopping down next to the pregnant woman. “I was outside talking to Beverly and she told me that you got another death note. Are you okay?”

“She’s fine, Walter,” Stan insisted.

Whirling around to Joshua, Walter demanded to know, “What are you doing to protect her?”

Cameron answered, “We’re going to stay with her until we catch the creep terrorizing her.”

“That’s not good enough,” Walter said.

“Excuse me,” Cameron said, “who are you?” She turned to Stan. “Who is he?”

“This is Walter Bentley,” Stan said. “Vice President in charge of IT, our computer technology.”

Walter hovered over Tiffany. “I think you should come stay with me. I live in a security building.”

Tiffany fought to stand up. “I’d rather stay in my own home.”

Cameron noticed Joshua craning his neck to peer out the door into the reception area. “You don’t need to worry, Walter. We’ll be with Tiffany every second until this is over.”

“Got it!” Hannah sang out in a chipper tone while hurrying into the office. “Sorry I took so long. I had to go to the ladies room. Bentley, you left your binder on Beverly’s desk.” While reaching over Joshua’s shoulder, the vice president dropped the binder onto the coffee table. Its contents spilled across the tabletop. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Joshua, Stan, and Cameron leaned over to help Walter collect the assortment of notes, much of it looking like gibberish to put back into the binder.

“What the—” Stan Frost uttered a curse while lifting up a note on white stationary. “Why—” Sputtering, he held out the note to Joshua.

“What is it?” Hannah asked.

While Stan glared at Walter, whose face turned white with shock, Joshua read out loud:

Roses are dead;

Now they are gone;

And so are you.

Rest in peace.

Tiffany shrieked.

“What—” Walter turned to Cameron for help. “I never saw that before in my life.”

“Walter, how could you?” Hannah asked.

“It wasn’t me,” Walter insisted.

“You’re fired!” Stan said before ordering Cameron, “Arrest him.”

“Not before questioning him,” Cameron stood up. “Walter, we need to talk.”

“I didn’t do it.” Walter was near tears. “Tiffany, you have to believe me. I would never hurt you. I love you. Can’t you see that?”

“Do you call terrorizing a poor girl love?” Stan asked.

“He needs help,” Hannah said. “Our company offers psychological counseling for our employees—”

“I don’t need psychological counseling!” Walter shouted. “Someone planted that in my binder. I’m being framed.” He turned to Cameron. “Can’t you see that?”

Cameron took Walter by the arm. “Of course, I see that,” she said. “Let’s go to one of the conference rooms and talk.”

“Tiffany …” Walter begged as the detective led him out by the arm.

Stan Frost shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

Tiffany’s eyes filled with tears while she rubbed her stomach. “I don’t either. Walter seemed like such a nice sweet gentle man. Socially awkward, but sweet.”

“Those are always the ones you need to look out for, honey,” Hannah said.

“I need to go call him a lawyer.” Tiffany pulled herself up to her feet.

“Why?” Stan demanded to know.

“Because I can’t believe Walter did it,” she said.

“He was planning to kill you,” Hannah said. “I’ve seen crazies like him before. He’s fixated on you. First chance he gets, he’ll take you out. Believe me.”

“I can’t believe Walter would ever do anything to hurt me.” Tiffany waddled to the door. “I’m going to go call a friend of mine.”

“We have a legal service.” Hannah tucked her organizer under her arm. “I’ll call them.”

Joshua caught Stan by the arm when he tried to follow Hannah and Tiffany out the door. “We need to talk.” The president’s mouth hung open while Joshua closed the door, turned around, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Do you have something to say to me, Mr. Thornton?”

“When are you planning to tell her?”

“Tell who what?” Gradually, the firm expression softened to one of concern.

“Tiffany,” Joshua replied. “When do you plan to tell her that you’re her father?”

“What—” Stan dropped his façade. “How did you know?”

“I have two daughters,” Joshua said. “Most people, with their dirty minds, would mistake your affection toward Tiffany as something perverted. But I saw it for what it is. Fatherly love. Cameron told me that Tiffany’s mother was single. Riding in like a knight in shining armor right when she needed it—that didn’t just happen. She needed help and your paternal feelings wouldn’t let you not help her.”

Stan Frost went behind his desk and opened a drawer. He removed a yellowed envelope from inside and tossed it onto the center of his desktop. He nodded his head at Joshua. “Read it. It’s all there.”

Joshua picked up the envelope and took out the stationary filled with a woman’s handwriting in cursive. The signature line read Ashley Ambrose.

While Joshua scanned the contents of the letter, Stan told him, “Biggest mistake I ever made in my life. I fell in love with Ashley at first sight. She was my everything, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late. My mother hated her. She was a domineering, prejudice—even hateful woman.”

“Your mother?”

“But she was my mother.” Stan nodded his head. “She kept calling Ashley a JAP.”

“Jewish American Princess.”

“When Ashley and I became engaged, my mother was furious,” Stan said. “She ordered me to choose. Her or Ashley.”

Joshua stopped reading and looked across the desk at the company president, whose face was filled with sorrow.

“I choose poorly.”

“You didn’t know Ashley was pregnant,” Joshua noted the contents of the letter.

“She was hurt, which she had every reason to be. She left the area and never looked back.” Stan pointed at the letter. “I never heard from her until she sent me that letter when she was dying.”

“She told Tiffany that you had abandoned them.” Joshua put his finger on the words in the letter. “By the time she realized how much she had hurt Tiffany by poisoning her against you, it was too late.”

“Do you blame her?” Stan dropped down into the chair behind his desk. “I loved Ashley. She’s Tiffany’s mother.”

“Show her this letter,” Joshua said.

“And make Tiffany think her mother was a lying monster?” Stan shook his head. “Tiffany thinks her mother was a saint. I can’t dirty her memory like that.”

“What else can you do?” Joshua asked. “If you tell her that you’re her father, she’ll hate you for having abandoned her. If you show her this letter, you’ll crush the memory she has of her mother.”

“Now you know my dilemma,” Stan said. “As soon as I got that letter, I hired a private investigator to keep tabs on Tiffany. When she was graduating from college, I was at the ceremony to see her cross that stage. When she got married, I crashed her wedding. She never noticed me.”

“And when her husband died, you swooped in to bring her here and keep her safe.” Joshua dropped the letter onto the center of the desk. “What are your intentions?”

“You just said it. Keep her safe.”

“This is a family run company,” Joshua said. “Do you have any ex-wives or children—”

“I never married,” Stan said. “Ashley was the love of my life. The only heirs I have are Tiffany and her baby.”

Joshua leaned over the desk. “Mr. Frost, think about it. Who has the most to lose now that your daughter is on the radar?”

Stan looked up at him.

“You’re the president of a multi-million-dollar company,” Joshua told him. “You brought her in and made her your executive assistant. Don’t tell me that she’s going to stay that. Don’t tell me that you aren’t grooming her to take this chair when you decide to retire.”

“No one knows that she’s my daughter.”

“But you’re grooming her for the fast track.” While Stan stared up at him in silence, Joshua asked, “Who has the most to lose since Tiffany came here? What about your senior vice president?”

“Not him,” Stan said with certainty.

“How can you be so sure?”

“He’s dying,” Stan said. “Prostate cancer. He’s been out for the last six weeks. There’s nothing they can do. He’s got maybe another two weeks to live.” He added, “No one knows about it.”

“No one?” Joshua asked. “Absolutely no one on this planet knows?”

Stan hesitated. “Except the other vice presidents. Hannah and Walter.” He sat up. “Walter Bentley.”

“Who will take the senior vice president’s slot after the current one passes?”

“Tiffany,” Stan replied in a soft voice.

“If she wasn’t here, then who?”

Stan was silent.

“Whoever that is, has the most to lose by Tiffany’s very existence,” Joshua said. “Or, in other words, that person has the most to gain from her murder.”

The cell phone vibrated on Joshua’s hip. While Stan gazed up at him with wide eyes, he checked the text message on the screen. “Cameron’s in trouble.”

The elevator doors flew open and the EMTs came rushing out with a gurney between them.

“This way!” Beverly, the president’s administrative assistant, directed them down the corridor to the conference room.

Lieutenant Dugan came out from the corner of the elevator where he had squeezed on. He followed the EMTs into the conference room where Joshua was bent over Cameron, whose body was crumpled in the corner. “What happened?” the police lieutenant asked.

Stan, Hannah, Tiffany, and the assistant grabbed the opportunity to crowd into the doorway to hear Joshua’s answer.

“She got jumped,” Joshua said. “She was questioning a suspect and somehow he grabbed her gun and beat her with it.”

“We have serious head trauma,” one of the EMT yelled into his radio.

“What about this suspect?” the lieutenant asked Joshua.

“He got away,” Joshua replied.

“Where were you?” the lieutenant shouted.

“Hey, don’t use that tone with me,” Joshua said. “I don’t work for you. Cameron was here on her own time trying to help this woman and I was here because she’s my wife. Now my wife could die and you’re accusing me of—”

“Coming through!” The EMTs plowed in between the two men with the gurney with Cameron loaded on it. Her face was covered with an oxygen mask. A bloody towel was wrapped around her head.

Joshua fell in behind them to follow them out the door.

In the doorway, Stan grabbed Joshua by the arm. “Where’s Bentley?”

“Gone,” Joshua said. “And he’s got Cameron’s gun with him.”

“If he’s smart, he’ll leave the area,” Lieutenant Dugan said.

“I’m sorry.” Joshua pulled his arm out of Stan’s grasp. “I have to go. My wife needs me.”

Joshua ran down the corridor to slip onto the elevator with the gurney.

Tiffany clung to Stan Frost who turned his attention to the police lieutenant. “What about Tiffany?”

“We’ll do what we can to protect her,” the police lieutenant said. “Problem is, we have a marathon going on in the area tomorrow morning and thousands of runners and their families have poured into the area. Most of my people are on crowd patrol detail.”

“This maniac is loose with a gun!” Stan shouted. “He’s promised to kill Tiffany and her baby. She needs protection.”

“I can stay with her,” Hannah offered.

“Can you take her to your house?” the police lieutenant asked Stan. “Is that secure?”

“Yes.”

“Take her there. Stay with her,” Lieutenant Dugan said. “Give me a couple of hours to switch some officers around and I’ll have someone there by eight o’clock tonight. I promise.”

Stan Frost’s home was a sprawling five bedroom rancher in the suburbs of Pittsburgh set deep in the woods off the main road. By six o’clock, it was dark in the dreary winter weather. The trees looming over the rancher seemed to make it darker.

At the sound of the doorbell, Stan put down the book he was reading and went to the front door to find Hannah waiting on his doorstep. Her briefcase was tucked under her arm.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you at home, Stan,” she said in a breathless voice, “but after you had left, the auditor from the IRS came in. He says you had a meeting for six o’clock.”

“That meeting is scheduled for next week,” Stan said.

Hannah shook her head. “That’s what I thought. But he’s there and he won’t meet with me. I tried to tell him about what has been going on, but he says that if you jerk him around, then he’ll jerk you around. That’s what he said.”

Stan glanced over his shoulder into the house.

“How’s Tiffany?” Hannah asked.

“She’s napping. How, I have no idea.”

“Are the police here yet?” She stepped inside.

He hesitated. “It’ll be another hour before they get here.”

“I can stay with her.” She grinned at him. “I did used to be a Marine. I know how to handle a gun.”

Stan shook his head at her. “You surprise me.”

“What?” she asked. “That I’m woman enough to care, or man enough to step up to bat when I’m needed.”

He took his coat out of the closet. “I guess I should go. Good-bye, Hannah.”

“Good night, Stan.”

Through the front window, she watched the tail lights of Stan’s Cadillac make their way down the long driveway and turn onto the road. After making sure he was gone, she opened up her briefcase. She slipped on a pair of latex gloves and took the nine-millimeter Beretta out. She checked the cartridge in the chamber and made her way down the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

She found the guest in the last bedroom down the hallway, the room closest to the master suite.

Slowly, she opened the door to slip inside the darkened room. She could see the form of the sleeping woman under the covers. Careful not to make a noise on the wooden floor, she crept up to the side of the bed, aimed her gun, and shot repeatedly at the bed.

The room filled with the smell of hot gun powder.

The sound of the gunshots was still echoing in her ears when Hannah became aware of the door to the closet opening behind her.

She was whirling around when the baton hit her across the back of the neck to send her down on all fours next to the bed. The gun was kicked out of her reach. In the darkness, she could see two shadows standing over her.

“Hannah Pickering, you’re under arrest for attempted murder,” she heard Detective Cameron Gates say as she slapped handcuffs onto her wrists.

Cameron Gates? It can’t be. I saw her wheeled out on a gurney after Bentley escaped.

“Attempted?” Hannah asked while Cameron dragged her up onto her feet. She looked over at the bed to see that she had blown away two pillows.

Joshua Thornton flipped on the light switch.

Hannah blinked at the light in her eyes. “You played me.”

Joshua and Cameron laughed loudly. “Oh, boy, oh, boy!” Joshua said. “We played you good.”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Cameron asked her. “I saw you flipping out when Josh and I showed up at the office today. Why did you think Tiffany wouldn’t go to the police? When playing down your terror game as a prank didn’t work, you knew you had to frame someone else. It was a piece of cake to slip that note into Bentley’s binder and then trip to dump it in front of us.”

“Walter Bentley was the perfect guy to frame,” Joshua said. “He has a crush on Tiffany, plus he was your competition for the senior VP slot, which you knew was coming up. Due to your seniority, you were a shoe in until Tiffany Ambrose came to town.”

“In your job as HR VP,” Cameron said, “even though Stan didn’t tell you he was Tiffany’s father, you were able to find that out with a thorough background check. You knew he was grooming her to be your boss and you just couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you decided to first terrorize her in hopes that she’d go away quietly,” Joshua said. “When that didn’t work, you decided to kill her.”

Hannah looked from Joshua to Cameron, who smirked at her. “I want a lawyer.”

Joshua and Cameron were enjoying a romantic dinner in their booth at Cricksters, a retro cafe in their hometown of Chester, West Virginia, located directly across the Pennsylvania state line. After a filling dinner of deluxe cheeseburgers and chips, they were sharing their personalized sundae for two.

Grinning, Cameron licked the ice cream and hot fudge from her lips.

Joshua grinned back at her before turning his attention to the dessert.

“Tiffany Ambrose had her baby this morning,” she announced. “A boy. Guess what she named him.”

“What?” he asked.

“Jeffrey Stanley Cameron.”

He laughed. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Jeffrey was his father’s name,” she explained. “Stan Frost is her father—”

“He told her.”

“Yes.” Cameron smiled softly. “But she already knew. Her mother had told her everything before she passed. Tiffany didn’t know how to tell him. She didn’t know he knew.” She took another spoonful of the ice cream with a generous helping of hot fudge and whipped topping.

“It’s good that it’s all out in the open,” Joshua said.

“It’s never a good idea to keep things a secret.” She met his gaze. “You did see the background check on Hannah Pickering.”

“Yes, I did.” He put down the spoon.

“She was in the Marines, like Eddie Palmer,” Cameron said.

“But they did not serve together,” he said.

“She served in administration,” Cameron said, “human resources to be exact.”

Joshua slowly shook his head. “You certainly do your homework.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” she said. “Remember our bet?”

He nodded his head. “Hannah Pickering was Eddie Palmer’s personnel officer in the Marines when he was arrested, tried, and convicted. His file, including the case file, crossed her desk. It is entirely possible—”

“Conceivable,” she said.

“That Hannah Pickering stole his MO.”

“So the two cases were connected,” Cameron said.

“Hannah had nothing to do with the Eddie Palmer case.” He shook his finger at her. “When we made this bet, we were talking about a friend or detective or someone who was involved in the case—”

“We never said where the line was drawn,” Cameron said. “We said connected. Hannah Pickering was connected to Eddie Palmer. I was right, you were wrong. I win the bet.”

Joshua fell back in his seat.

Cocking her head at him, Cameron shot him a naughty grin.

“What do you want from me?” He chuckled while he asked.

She gazed across the table at him while she picked up the spoon from the sundae. One of her eyebrows arched as she slowly licked the hot fudge from the back of the spoon.

The End

LUCKY DOG

A MAC FARADAY MYSTERY SHORT

This is going to be your day, you lucky dog.

Lance Collins admired the clear blue sky overhead before pulling his black Ferrari into the last empty parking space. Rarely was such a prime slot, directly across from the Spencer Inn Sports Club staff entrance, vacant at ten o’clock in the morning.

It’s a sign. Things are finally going my way.

Fighting to keep down the wicked laugh bubbling its way to his lips, Lance grabbed his athletic bag and tennis racquet from the passenger seat and stepped out of his car.

The feeling of good fortune took a dip when the hair on the back of his neck rose to attention. He turned around to find the source of suspicion in the form of a German Shepherd eying him from the front seat of a red Dodge Viper in the carte blanche of parking spaces—that reserved for the Spencer Inn’s owner, Mac Faraday.

“What are you looking at?”

The shepherd narrowed his eyes into a glare.

“Mutt.”

The dog’s snout twitched. His lips rose into a snarl.

“My younger brother used to have a dog just like you.” Lance waved the racquet in his hand. “He bit me. You know what I did to him?”

The shepherd bore his teeth.

“I backed over him with my car … on purpose. When they found him flattened in the road, I cried along with everyone else. No one ever knew.” Lance’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Take that as a warning, Gnarly. If I ever catch you in my sights, I won’t be tapping the brakes to slow down—I’ll be hitting the gas pedal.”

Gnarly jumped up in his seat to lunge at him with snarling barks. Lance seized the opportunity to club him over the head with the tennis racquet. To the attacker’s surprise, the dog dodged the blow before leaping back to clamp down on the racquet with his jaws.

“Give me that, you son of a bitch.” Keeping his grip on the handle, Lance pulled back in an attempt to retrieve his racquet while Gnarly shook his head like a predator snapping the neck of its prey. The dog’s teeth tore through the strings in the head of racquet.

When it became apparent that he was losing the tug-of-war, Lance resorted to pounding his adversary on top of the head with his fist. “You damn son of it bitch. I’m going to kill you.”

Gnarly dropped the racquet to respond with barks that sounded like his own canine version of curses and threats. Lance was in mid-lunge for the dog’s throat when he was pulled back by the shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mac Faraday yanked him back to step into the midst of the fight. The sight of his dog being attacked prompted him to take on an assertive nature that the tennis instructor had never seen coming from the former homicide detective turned inn owner—all thanks to an unexpected inheritance from his birth mother.

Wish I was an illegitimate bastard to a rich, world-famous mystery writer.

Taking notice of Mac’s faded blue t-shirt with a worn police academy emblem on his breast pocket, Lance silently swore that when he received his inheritance, he was going to dress in a style more befitting his social status.

“Your dog attacked me.” Lance held up the shredded tennis racquet. “Look at what he did. This is a three-hundred-dollar racquet. How do you expect me to give lessons to guests with equipment in this condition?”

“Maybe next time you’ll think about that before trying to hit my dog with it.”

Lance could see the German Shepherd, his tongue hanging out, laughing at him behind Mac’s back. Reminding himself that Mac had the power to fire him—and probably would—even if he was a favorite among the female patrons, Lance’s jaw clinched. “With all due respect, Mac, your dog came after me.”

“And grabbed your racquet out of your hand to chew it to bits?”

“Exactly.”

“All this without leaving the car?” Mac folded his arms across his chest. “He jumped out of the car, swiped your racquet out of your hand, and then jumped back into the car to shred it?”

“You shouldn’t be leaving such a vicious dog alone in your car like that,” Lance warned. “Someone could get hurt, sue you, and end up owning this inn.”

“Not if they’re smart enough to stay away from my car,” Mac replied. “Why do you think I drive Gnarly around with me? His pleasant odor and charming personality?”

Judging by the low noise he uttered from deep in his throat before hanging his head, Gnarly picked up on his master’s sarcasm.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lance was aware of Police Chief David O’Callaghan, his arms also folded across his chest, watching the exchange.

It’s only a matter of time. Where Mac Faraday goes, Chief O’Callaghan is never far behind.

“You don’t like dogs, do you, Lance?” the police chief asked.

Giving up on pleading his case against Gnarly, Lance turned to answer. “What? Do you intend to charge me with some hate crime for defending myself against a dog that tried to bite me?”

David observed the tattered racquet. “No, I believe Gnarly came out on top of that fight. I’m talking about Sparky. Your wife’s maid told us that Kim kicked you out after you tried to poison her Yorkshire Terrier.”

Lance waited for the rest of the news. Where’s the rest of it? I know you have more to tell me. So say it. I’ve been rehearsing for this moment. Give me my cue and let the curtain go up on my performance.

When it didn’t come, he asked, “You came out here to question me about Sparky? That was a month ago. Don’t tell me that bitch has decided to press charges against me for trying to kill her yip-yap.”

“Is that why your marriage only lasted sixty-three days?” Mac asked. “Sparky never did like you. You made it no secret about you not liking him. So you decided to get rid of him.”

David said, “The vet told us that someone had fed him chocolate. That’s why his kidneys were shutting down.”

“No one has any proof that I was the one who gave it to him,” Lance said.

“Sometimes you don’t need proof to know what someone is capable of,” Mac said, “That’s why Kim kicked you out. She knew.”

David chuckled, “What did you do? Give her a choice. You or the dog. She chose the dog and gave you the boot?”

“I don’t have to take this.” With a show of bravado, Lance turned away from them to toss his racquet through the open window of his car.

Mac followed him. “Talk about ironic. You’re back to living in your little condo looking down on Kim Weathersby’s lakefront mansion where her little yorkie is sleeping on what used to be your side of the bed.”

His patience at its limit, Lance whirled around. “What is this about?”

“Kim was found dead last night.”

Lance could see the police chief studying him when he broke the news. That’s why he’s there. He has to see my reaction.

Having prepared for days, Lance gave it to him. The delight he felt when he launched into his performance was similar to that of a child waking up on Christmas morning after having waited weeks for it.

Lance’s mouth dropped open. He let out a gasp. His eyes were wide when he clutched his chest while collapsing against the door of his sports car. With a sob in his voice, he asked, “Are you serious? … No … it can’t be. Kim … She was my wife. How? How did it happen?”

Yes, don’t forget to ask how it happened. They’ll notice if you don’t ask for all the details.

“The maid found her last night,” David told him. “Kim was hosting a dinner party. She had poured a martini and taken it upstairs to get ready. When the guests started arriving and she still hadn’t come down, the maid went up to check on her and found her collapsed on the floor in her dressing room.”

“Collapsed from what?” he asked.

“We’re still waiting for the autopsy results,” David said.

“Can’t be drugs,” Lance said. “Kim didn’t do drugs. She drank. She had to have her martini at four o’clock every day but she wasn’t a lush.”

He noticed Mac studying him even more closely than the police chief.

Of course he is. He had been a homicide detective for over twenty years in Washington, D.C. Police Chief David O’Callaghan is young. He’s sharp, but still young. That was why he always called Mac Faraday in when it came to a murder on Deep Creek Lake. If anyone is going to nail me, it’s going to be Mac Faraday.

“You were very well aware of Kim’s habits, weren’t you?” Mac asked.

Sound offended by the suggestion. “I loved Kim.”

“She dumped you for a dog.” The corner of Mac’s lips curled. “As a matter of fact, her lawyer tells us that she had an appointment for changing her will on Monday morning. She was disinheriting you to make Sparky her chief beneficiary again.”

“I was here in the lounge with a date last night,” he said.

David pounced on the slip. “I didn’t ask you for an alibi. We didn’t even say it was murder.”

Mac was cocking his head at the tennis instructor.

Behind his master, Gnarly was also cocking his head. The dog had sat back down in the passenger seat of the sport car and rested his front paws on top of the door. He seemed to be enjoying the show.

Is that dog smirking at me?

Lance sucked in a deep breath and regrouped. “Why are you here talking to me then if you’re not asking for an alibi? Kim was only twenty-eight years old. She was healthy. Why else would she drop dead if someone hadn’t killed her?”

David and Mac exchanged glances before the police chief said, “That’s our thought exactly. And you’re right up there at the top of the list, Lance. Whirlwind romance and marriage that lasted only a couple of days past two months. Prenup that’s tighter than a bank vault. She kicked you out with only the clothes on your back and that Ferrari that you got for a wedding present.”

“I was here last night. I had a date. You can call her if you need to check out my alibi.”

Mac said, “But you were at your wife’s house yesterday afternoon before she collapsed. The caterer had let you in. What were you doing there?”

“Same thing I’ve been doing there ever since Kim kicked me out,” Lance replied. “Begging her to take me back. I told you. I loved her. Yesterday, I took her two dozen long stem red roses, just like I had every day for the last ten days since she kicked me out. I’m sure you found them there along with all of the other roses that I’ve been bringing her.”

David was nodding his head. “The caterer told us that you had sent her out of the room to get a vase to put them in.”

Roll your eyes. Let them see how silly this whole line of questioning is—especially when they have no proof. “Excuse me for wanting her to come home and find them on display in the middle of the dining room table.”

Mac replied, “And while the caterer was getting the vase, you were alone in the dining room with the bar and vodka. Are you sure you didn’t slip anything into the vodka while you were alone?”

Of course, Mac would notice that.

“I wasn’t completely alone,” Lance smirked. “Sparky was there, too.” He showed them the bite marks on his ankle. “That rat bit me and I kicked him. Do you want to arrest me for that, too?”

“As you mentioned,” David said, “you and Kim were married for two months. You’re aware of her schedule by now. Friday afternoons, she goes to the salon to get her hair done. Why did you take roses to her when you knew she wouldn’t be there?”

Lance shot back with the answer that he had thought out very well. “Because I knew she wouldn’t let me in. But if she hadn’t have died, if I had a chance, I know that she would have taken me back eventually.” He sniffed while willing the tears to come to his eyes. “I know she loved me.” He covered his face with his hands when the tears didn’t come.

The interview ended with Police Chief O’Callaghan asking for the phone number of his date from the night before. After making a show of being confused with grief, Lance brought up the phone number on his cell phone and read it off to him.

“Call me if you hear anything,” he said to David in a pleading voice.

There was a flicker of sympathy in the police chief’s eyes when he assured him that he would.

Even if they do know I did it, they have nothing. Without any definite proof, they have to have some doubt. Of course, the timing is suspicious, but that’s only circumstantial. Things happen at the strangest times. People drop dead for no good reason. That’s what happened to Kim’s father. He was only in his thirties when he dropped dead. Why can’t his daughter do the same? So it happened in the middle of a messy break up? Stranger things have happened.

Lance was aware of Gnarly watching him with accusation in his dark brown eyes while Mac Faraday backed out of his reserved spot and drove away.

Dogs have a sixth sense about people. Kim had told him that the night she tossed him out. Sparky had never warmed to him. He didn’t think it was that important to win over a rat dog, until Kim started suspecting that maybe there was something wrong with him that made Sparky dislike him.

Maybe Sparky resented my taking his place as Kim’s chief beneficiary in her will? Whatever the reason—Yeah, I tried to kill him, but it was self-defense. Didn’t Kim see that I was trying to save our marriage when I fed that chocolate cake to her dog?

With a choked voice and grief-filled face, Lance went inside to tell the manager of the sports department that he had to go home. His wife had passed away. Stunned by the news, the manager told him to take as much time as he needed.

That’s exactly what I intend to do.

When he got home, Lance tossed the shredded racquet into the garbage. No more giving tennis lessons to desperate housewives and cougars on the prowl. He dropped his athletic bag to the floor.

This time next week, I’ll be back on the lake soaking up the rays next to my new yacht.

With a grin, he set his cell phone on the kitchen table while on his way in to make a celebratory drink.

Don’t celebrate too much. When O’Callaghan calls, he’s going to try to trip you up again. You need to stay on your toes.

He wondered how long the police chief could string out the investigation.

It isn’t like Kim has a bunch of relatives clamoring for justice and wanting to kick me out of her will. She was an orphan. Her father had died when she was a child and her mother was killed in a private plane crash. Yep, the hundred-million dollar orphan was the perfect wife—except for her spoiled Yorkie. First thing I’m doing when I move back in is feed Sparky a bowl of antifreeze. Time to celebrate with a cocktail.

He went into his kitchenette to mix a martini. It seemed most appropriate. After all, it was a martini that brought him his good fortune. All of the ingredients were waiting for him along with a martini glass he had put in the cupboard the afternoon before.

Since it is Mac Faraday who suspects, he’ll be pushing for a thorough investigation, but that won’t do him any good. He’ll never find the evidence to prove it.

According to what Lance had uncovered during his research on the Internet, the poison he had used, an alkaloid toxin, aconite, would only show up with the most sophisticated of toxicology tests. Oh, he was very careful. There was no way it could be traced back to him. He had even done his research on a computer at a public library in Morgantown so that they wouldn’t find record of his research on his computer.

Even if they do find the poison, so what? There’s no way they can trace it directly back to me. I made damn sure of that.

Lance ran his fingers across the smooth bleached counters in his kitchen. They weren’t going to find any trace of the poison. It was long gone. He had flushed it down the men’s room toilet at a bar in Oakland, the next town over, where he had taken his date the night before.

He held the martini glass up to the light and admired his cleverness. Yes, it was suspicious my showing up at the mansion while Kim was out getting her hair done. I knew she wouldn’t be there. Mac was right.

As Lance had argued, he had been showing up at the mansion with flowers every day for ten days—long enough to make it not unusual for him to come with gifts in an attempt to win back the woman he loved.

Loved. Yes, I loved that spoiled fairy princess. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Lance poured the vodka into the shaker along with the ice. While he shook the mixer, he chuckled so hard that his feet began tapping to the rhythm until he broke into a dance of joy.

Impressed with the beauty of the roses he had brought, the caterer didn’t hesitate when he sent her out of the room for the vase. That was when he slipped the martini glass he had coated with the poison out from under the tissue in the box of flowers to switch with the one that always rested next to the martini shaker in the bar—the glass that Kim would use to enjoy her four o’clock cocktail.

He was about to make the switch when he felt the clamping down of little teeth on his ankle. It was all he could do to keep from dropping both glasses.

“Get away from me, you little mongrel!”

Sparky held onto Lance’s ankle with his needle-like teeth for all it was worth. It took several kicks before Lance was finally able to punt the Yorkie halfway across the room. Yelping, Sparky scurried out the door.

Excited to get on with his celebration, Lance poured the martini so that he could go out onto the balcony to look down on what would be his new home. Holding up his drink in a toast, he said, “To my lucky day.” He took a sip of the martini. “As they say, every dog has his day.”

The liquid in the glass felt smooth flowing down his throat.

Proud of his cleverness, he inhaled deeply only to have none of the oxygen go into his lungs. Again, he sucked in all the air he could, but his lungs deflated like a balloon having all the air sucked out of it.

Lance staggered off the balcony into the living room.

The rings from the phone seemed to bounce around from one side of his brain to the other. He collapsed to the floor. His fingernails broke off while he crawled across the hardwood floor in his last desperate attempt for salvation.

How did this happen? Sparky! I shook Sparky off my ankle and turned back to the bar and the glasses were there. Which glass was the one with the poison? Was it the one on the left? But I was so sure—I had planned it so carefully!

Police Chief David O’Callaghan hung up the phone in time for Mac Faraday to come into his office. Gnarly jumped up into the chair across from his desk.

David held up the autopsy report. “Lance Collins didn’t kill Kim Weathersby.”

Mac’s eyebrow rose in surprise. “What did kill her?”

“Congenital heart defect.” David handed the report to him. “She had a massive heart attack. The medical examiner talked to Kim’s family doctor. It was a hereditary condition. Killed her father. Kim knew about it, but kept it a secret. She didn’t want to be treated like an invalid. No one knew.”

“And she was drinking vodka martinis?”

David held up his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “That was her motto. Live fast, die young, and leave a gorgeous corpse. She went out the way she wanted.”

Shaking his head, Mac lowered himself into the chair across from the police chief’s desk. “I could have sworn Lance killed her. I could see it in his face.” He reached over to stroke the top of his dog’s head. “Gnarly saw it. Didn’t you, Gnarl?”

“The husband looked good to me, too,” David said. “But Kim Weathersby did die of natural causes. Her husband Lance Collins is chief beneficiary in her current will right ahead of Sparky. Rightfully, he’s earned everything he’s got coming to him.”

Laughing, Mac tossed the autopsy report back onto David’s desk. “That lucky dog.”

THE END

THE GNARLY REHABILITATION PROGRAM

A GNARLY MYSTERY SHORT

The bell over the top of the door at the Doggie Hut clang to signal the arrival of a customer; prompting Lizzy, the blond receptionist, to look up from the business of ordering butterscotch-scented doggie conditioner from her on-line supplier.

These two guys have to be looking for directions.

Set on the shores of Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland, Spencer’s most luxurious pet salon didn’t usually have patrons who appeared less groomed than their canine clients. Snapping her spearmint-flavored chewing gum, Lizzy noted that the bald-headed man wasn’t in need of a haircut as much as he was in need of deodorant, which became apparent when he stepped up close to the reception desk and flashed her a mouth full of rotten teeth.

“Mac Faraday sent us to pick up his dog.”

Lizzy looked him up and down before turning to his companion, who had his gray mop tied back into a loose ponytail. His beard was so matted that it didn’t look like a comb could get through it. At least their clothes are clean. Their khaki slacks and blue button-down shirts still had the factory folds in place.

“Excuse me,” the bald man said in a sharp tone and snapped his fingers. “The dog. Mr. Faraday left orders for us to retrieve him as quickly as possible. We don’t want to keep the big guy waiting, do we?” He uttered a low chuckle and once more flashed those rotten teeth at her.

“Sure.” She popped a bubble in her chewing gum. “We’ll get Gnarly for you right away. Today’s visit will cost Mr. Faraday three-hundred-fifty-two dollars and thirty-five cents.” Drumming her manicured fingertips on the desktop, she smiled at him from behind the reception desk.

He gestured with a wave of his hand. “Put it on Mr. Faraday’s account.”

Lizzy laughed. Her amusement caused the men’s smiles to drop. “Mr. Faraday doesn’t have an account.” Folding her arms across her chest, she fell back in her seat.

After exchanging stunned expressions, the hairy man found his voice to ask, “What do you mean Mr. Faraday doesn’t have an account? All rich guys have accounts. He brings his dog in every month—”

“His fiancée Archie Monday brings Gnarly in every month,” Lizzy said. “She pays for his grooming. She went to a bridal shower today and told us that Mr. Faraday would be picking Gnarly up. I guess he decided to send you so that he could watch the game. A lot of our clients are being picked up early so that their parents can catch—”

“Put it on his broad—I mean his fiancée’s account,” the bald man ordered.

“She doesn’t have an account either,” Lizzy said. “Listen, the only way you’re going to get Gnarly is to pay for his grooming which is three-hundred-fifty-two dollars and thity-five cents. We will accept a credit card.”

The two men stepped back from the counter.

“What are we doing to do, Ernie?” the hairy man whined. “She won’t let us take the dog.”

“We can just steal him.” Ernie fingered the weapon in his pocket. “I’ll show her my gun and order her to turn the dog over.”

The two men looked over at Lizzy, who eyed them while chewing her gum. Her eyes were narrowed to thin slits.

“Hey, Bert,” Ernie whispered, “do you think she suspects we don’t work for Mr. Faraday?”

“She’ll know we don’t work for him if you pull your gun on her,” Bert replied. “How much money do you have?”

“Are you serious? We’re crooks. We can’t pay our victim’s bill. Do you know how wrong that is?”

“We’ll tack it onto the ransom,” Bert said.

“If I had three hundred and fifty bucks to pay for a dog bath, I wouldn’t be needing to kidnap rich people’s dogs.”

“Let’s just forget it,” Bert said.

“No,” Ernie said, “We’ve put too much into this to just walk away. We got ourselves respectable clothes and did all the casing—following Faraday and that woman around with that dog—”

“Do you really think Faraday is going to pay a hundred thousand dollars to get that dog back?” Bert said. “He doesn’t act that crazy about him.”

“But his woman completely adores him,” Ernie said. “If Faraday ever wants to get laid again, he’ll pay up to get his stupid dog back.”

“But before we can snatch that stupid dog and hold him for ransom, we need to pay three hundred and fifty bucks,” Bert said.

“Not to worry.” Ernie ushered his friend out the door.

“What are we going to do, Ernie?”

“We’re crooks, aren’t we? We’re going to do what any self-respecting crook does when he needs money.”

A half-hour—and a liquor store robbery later—Bert and Ernie returned to the Doggie Hut with cash to pay for their kidnap victim, who was waiting for them in the reception area.

When they walked through the door, Bert stepped back behind Ernie at the sight of the hundred pounds of newly washed and blown-dry fur, and shiny, white, sharp, teeth—freshly brushed with peanut butter flavored toothpaste. Wearing a bright red bandana around his neck, the black and sable German shepherd sat in the reception area. His majestic ears stood up tall upon his head while Gnarly locked his gaze on the two men and followed their movements around the room.

After taking their cash payment, Lizzy handed them a receipt.

“Leash,” Bert whispered to Ernie.

“Where’s his leash?” the bald-headed crook asked the receptionist.

Lizzy laughed. Once again seeing their perplexed expressions, she said, “This is Gnarly.” She gestured at the German shepherd studying them. “He has no leash.”

“Do you have one we can use?” Ernie asked.

“Sure.” Lizzy led them over to a rack that had a variety of leashes in lengths, thickness, and colors. “Pick one out.”

Eying up the dog, who stared at them unblinkingly, the two men examined the leashes on the rack. “He looks like he needs a really big strong leash,” Bert said. “We’ll take this one.” He picked out the thickest black leather leash he could find and stepped over to Gnarly.

“That will be twenty-seven-fifty,” Lizzy called out.

Bert stopped with the leash over Gnarly’s head. “Are  you serious?”

“Yes.” Lizzy held out her hand. “No money. No leash. No Gnarly.”

“Pay the woman.” Ernie grabbed the leash out of his hairy friend’s hand. “I’ll get the dog.”

Bert dug the handful of bills from his pocket and went up to the counter while his partner in crime reached for  Gnarly’s collar. He snapped it to the ring and stepped over to the door with the leash in his hand. “Let’s go,” he called to his companion who was still waiting for his receipt.

“I’m coming.”

Hurrying to leave before Mac Faraday arrived to catch them leaving with Archie Monday’s beloved dog, the two men threw open the door and ran out into the parking lot of the lakeshore shopping plaza. Leash in hand, Ernie threw open the rear door of their van and gestured for the German shepherd to leap into the back, only to find the leash hanging limp in his hand. The end of the leash was slightly frayed where it had been cut through.

“Where’s the dog, Ernie? I thought you got the dog.”

“He must have bitten through the leash.”

The two men ran back into the Doggie Hut to find Gnarly sitting in the same spot where they had left him. Lizzy was leaning on the reception desk with her chin in her hands. She snapped a bubble in his chewing gum. “Forget something?”

“He bit through the leash.” Ernie showed her the frayed end of the now useless leash.

“Of course he did,” she said. “Gnarly doesn’t like leashes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that when I paid twenty-seven bucks for this one?” Bert asked.

“Hey, I told you that Gnarly doesn’t use a leash,” Lizzy replied.

“But you didn’t tell us why,” Ernie said.

“You didn’t ask.”

Ernie was about to reach for his gun when his buddy pushed him back with a hand on his chest. “How are we supposed to get him out of here then?”

“You could try telling him to come,” Lizzy said.

“And he’ll follow us?” Bert asked.

“If he wants to. If not, well …” Lizzy shrugged.

Bert told Ernie, “Tell him to come.”

“I suggest you say please,” Lizzy said.

“Gnarly,” Bert said in an upbeat tone, “come.”

Cocking his head to one side, Gnarly looked at the two men. He narrowed his eyes into a glare.

“Please,” Bert added in a pleading tone.

Gnarly stood up and came to him. With a grin, Bert petted the German shepherd.

“Is there anything else you can tell us before we leave?” Ernie asked the receptionist.

“Make sure your health insurance is paid up.”

Things were finally looking right for the bad guys when Gnarly followed them out the door.

Lizzy waited until they were gone before picking up the phone and hitting the redial button to call the last number she had spoken to. When Mac Faraday picked up, she announced, “The Gnarly Rehabilitation Program has begun.”

Bert and Ernie had rented a small hunting cabin in the woods on the mountain overlooking Deep Creek Lake. It was pricey, but since Gnarly was well-known in the resort town, they needed an out of the way hideout in which to stash him until after Mac Faraday paid the ransom.

Then, they would be on easy street until they ran out  of cash and had to move on to their next crime.

Coordinating a dog napping that doesn’t work out according to plan can make you hungry. So the bad guys stopped to pick up a pizza from a takeout place on the way up the mountain.

When Gnarly tried to climb up into the front seat to help himself to the pizza, Ernie pushed him back. “You’ll eat when we reach the hideout.” Thinking about the gross canned food that they had for the dog, he uttered an evil chuckle. “This pizza is much too good for the likes of you, leash-eater.”

With a huff, Gnarly fell back into the back seat, uttered a deep sigh, and glared at the criminal who rejoiced in teasing him with the food permeating the van with its delicious scent.

“Ah, the sweet smell of pizza hot from the oven.” Ernie turned back to Gnarly. “You probably don’t even know that you’re a dog. Well, you are. You’re a d-o-g, dog. As long as you’re with us, you’re going to be treated like one. So you better hope your master pays up fast to get you back to your pampered pooch life, dog. Because until we get our money, you’re going to be treated like a dog. Got that, dog?”

In silence, Gnarly returned his glare.

Ernie checked his watch. “Step on it, Bert. The game starts in a couple of minutes. We’ll tell Faraday to drop off the ransom after the Steelers bury the Redskins.” He chuckled. “The Steelers and a big payoff. Can’t get any better than this.”

“I’ve got five hundred on the Steelers,” Bert grinned. “Yep, this is going to be our big day.”

The van turned off the main road and followed a gravel trail back to the cabin. Gingerly carrying the pizza box, Ernie opened the door and slid out. He had only one foot on the ground when a hundred pounds collided with his back to send him and the pizza box flying. Ernie landed face first  into the gravel. The pizza box hit the ground and bounced. The lid flew open and the pizza toppled out to land upside down in the grass.

Bert was running for the food while Ernie wrestled the dog who tore at his clothes before breaking away and running around the corner of the cabin.

“Our pizza!” Bert wailed. “What did you do?”

“The dog got the jump on me. Where’d that mutt go?”

“Really? The dog got the jump on you? Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Ernie said with a growl. “That dog isn’t  going to live long enough to get back to Faraday. First chance I get—” He reached for his gun, but it wasn’t in his pocket. “What happened to my gun?”

“Maybe the dog took it,” Bert said with a scoff.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Ernie searched the inside of the van.

“I don’t know, Ernie. Have you seen the way he looks at us?”

The bald-headed crook stopped searching. “What are you saying, Bert?”

“I don’t know.” Bert shrugged. “He kind of looked at us like the way cops look at you when you see them and you suddenly slow down to below the speed limit. Like they know. He knows, Ernie. He knows we’re bad guys and he’s just waiting to take us out.”

“He’s a dog, Bert.”

“Are you sure about that?” he replied. “Remember what that lady at the groomer’s said? She told us to make sure our health insurance was paid up. Why would she say that?”

“Because she’s a nut.” Unable to find his gun, Ernie slammed the van door shut. “Pick up that pizza and let’s go inside. I’m hungry.”

“It’s got dirt and grass in it.”

“What else have we got to eat?”

“Hot dogs,” Bert said. “Hot dogs and cheese curls.”

“I guess we have to settle for that.” Ernie chuckled. “But by the end of the day, after the Steelers kick the Redskins’ butts, we’ll be feeding on caviar.” He slapped his buddy on  the back and turned to the cabin.

“I don’t like caviar, Ernie.”

With a roll of his eyes, the bald-headed dog napper turned back to his partner. “Then you’ll be feasting on champagne.”

“Champagne gives me gas, Ernie,” Bert whined. “You know that.”

“Let’s find that dog, tie him up, and call Faraday to ruin his day.” Seeing that the cabin door was open, Ernie stopped. “Did you leave the door open when we left?”

“No, I shut and locked it,” Bert said with a tremble in his voice.

“Who opened it?”

“The dog, Ernie. It was the dog. He must have opened it and went inside. What kind of dog opens doors … locked doors?” He looked around. “Where is he now?” With a gasp, he grabbed his partner in crime’s arm. His hand trembled when he pointed toward the doorway.

There in the open doorway, Gnarly sat. His eyes were directed at the two men who had dognapped him. His tall ears stood erect like antenna picking up their very thoughts. After their eyes had all met, Gnarly stood up and turned to go back into the cabin.

“He’s waiting for us, Ernie,” Bert said in a low voice while backing up until his back was up against the side of the van.

Seeing his fear, Ernie growled. “What’s wrong with you? Have you forgotten who we are?” He pound his chest with a fist. “We are the bad guys!” He pointed to the dog in the doorway. “He’s our victim! He’s afraid of us!”

Bert shook his head. “He doesn’t look very scared to me, Ernie.”

“Because he’s too dumb to be scared.” Ernie held up his finger in declaration. “But I promise you, Bert, by the end of the day, someone here is going to be crying in fear and it won’t be me!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“It’s only for a couple of hours until we collect the  ransom from Faraday.” Grabbing his partner by the arm, Ernie dragged him to the door. “Let’s go. We’re missing the game. I’m hungry and I wanna call Faraday with our ransom demand before the kick-off.”

When the two men stepped into the cabin, they stood in shock. Taking in the scene that lay before them, they struggled to find their voices. It was Ernie who found it first.

“What the—” he cursed while stepping further into the cabin’s great room.

The food that had been resting on the kitchen counter in grocery bags was strewn on the floor. The refrigerator door hung open. Their case of beer had been dragged out and the cans scattered everywhere. The plastic wrappers from the  container of hot dogs lay empty.

Any food that had escaped consumption was drenched with dog urine.

The only food that appeared to have survived the siege was the canned dog food, which rested in a neat row on the kitchen table.

Wagging his tail, the culprit eyed them from where he was stretched out on the sofa.

“He did it, Ernie! Notice the cans of dog food? He’s trying to send us a message.”

Ernie shook him. “Bert, get hold of yourself. He’s a dog. Dogs rummage for food. He saw the wrappers and he broke in and ate everything.” Spying the overturned television, he let go of his partner to inspect the set. “The TV!” The electric cord was bitten into three pieces.

“He heard us talking about the game, Ernie,” Bert said. “He did that on purpose to get back at us. You never should have teased him in the van and called him a dog. You got him mad at us.”

“Dogs don’t do things on purpose.”

“Then why’d he wreck the TV and broke into the fridge and stole the hot dogs, Ernie?” Bert said. “And he shook up our beer.”

“Only because he couldn’t open the cans.” Ernie picked up one of the cans of beer. “He’s a dog. He’s a spoiled mutt that’s used to getting his own way. What you gotta do with a dog like that is show him who’s boss.” He turned to Gnarly. “Off the couch!”

Unfazed, Gnarly sat up on the sofa. His eyes were trained on Ernie and the can of beer that he wielded in his direction.

“I said off the couch!” Ernie pointed at the floor. “Now!”

“He’s not doing it, Ernie.”

“Because he doesn’t know who’s boss yet.” Ernie said. “This will show him.” He hurled the beer can at the large dog.

Without flinching, Gnarly caught the can in his mouth. While the two men stood in disbelief, the German shepherd closed his mouth with his powerful jaws, popping out both ends of the can to send beer flying out in a sudsy explosion. He then went on to crush the can flat in his jaws before spitting it out onto the floor.

With a roar, Gnarly charged at them from across the room to send them up onto the kitchen counter before returning to the sofa and lying down.

“Well,” Bert said, “now we know who’s boss.”

“Give me that phone,” Ernie said. “We’re calling Faraday right now.”

Bert dug the throw away burn phone from his pocket and handed it to Ernie. After dialing the number that he had written down for the multi-millionaire and retired homicide detective, Ernie waited while the phone rang on the other end of the line.

“Mac Faraday here,” was the upbeat greeting.

“We have your dog,” Ernie said in as menacing a tone as he could muster while trapped on top of the kitchen counter.

“How much?” the multi-millionaire replied.

“One hundred thousand, three-hundred and eighty-six dollars and eighty-five cents,” Ernie said.

“Are you sure you can come up with that much cash in one hour?” Mac Faraday replied.

“Me?” Ernie squawked.

“Small used bills,” Mac said. “I don’t want the IRS asking embarrassing questions.”

Ernie was still wrapping his head around the turn of events when Mac interjected, “Oh, I got a call on the other line. What’s your phone number?”

“510-555-2948,” Ernie replied.

“Who should I ask for?”

“Ernie.”

“Okay, Ernie, I’ll call you back in one hour and tell you where to bring Gnarly and the money,” Mac said. “Oh, and don’t call animal control. They won’t help you.”

Ernie was still sputtering when Mac disconnected the call.

“Did you give Mac Faraday your name and our phone number?” Bert asked.

With a scream, the two men jumped down off the kitchen counter and ran around the room yelling at each other.

“How could you give him our phone number and your name?” Bert asked. “You’re supposed to be the brains of this criminal team.”

“He asked … it was reflex. Someone asks you for your name and phone number and you give it to them.”

Crunch!

They turned back to the sofa.

During the dog nappers’ hysteria, their kidnap victim had discovered a monster-sized can of cheese curls, opened it, spilled the cheesy food across the sofa, and proceeded to munch on it—smearing an orange stain from one end of the sofa to the other.

“Ernie?”

“Yeah, Bert?”

“You do realize the rental company will take the cost of cleaning that sofa out of our deposit?”

“We’ll cover it up with a blanket and they’ll never notice until we’re long gone.”

Rrripp!

Enraged by a cheese curl that attempted to escape by dropping back behind a cushion, Gnarly grabbed one corner of the back of the sofa and shook violently until he ripped the cover from the back of the sofa to expose the foamy cushion inside the upholstery.

“I don’t think we can cover that up, Ernie.”

The upholstery flew.

Spencer Manor

Balancing a giant bowl of popcorn and a bottle of beer, Police Chief David O’Callaghan hurried into the home  theater in time to hear Mac Faraday disconnect the call from the kidnappers before turning his attention back to the football game between the Washington Redskins and the Pittsburgh Steelers. “What was that about animal control? What’s Gnarly   gotten into now?” Plopping down into the seat next to Mac, he offered him the bowl of popcorn.

“Oh, Gnarly’s gotten picked up by a couple of dog nappers.”

“Again?” David sat up. “Seriously?”

“We’ve just kicked-off.” He gestured for the police chief to sit back and enjoy the game. “I’ll check in with Gnarly at half-time.”

“Are you sure they have that long?”

“That all depends on them.” Mac took a drink from his bottle of beer. “Gnarly likes to play with his food first. Once they cease to amuse him, then they’re in trouble.”

“Now what are we going to do?” Bert asked. “Mac Faraday is going to call the police and give them our phone number and then they’ll track the GPS and—those satellites see things!”

“That means we need to get out of here,” Ernie said. “We need to make a run for it.” He started gathering their belongings.

“What about the dog?” Bert looked over at the German shepherd who was still digging up the gutted sofa in search of escaped cheese curls.

“We’ll shoot the dog,” Ernie said. “He’s been nothing but trouble since the beginning.”

“You lost the gun. Remember? Once he’s done eating the sofa, he may decide to start on us!” Spotting Gnarly, Bert let out a squawk. “Ernie, I don’t think he wants us to leave.”

Ernie looked up to see that Gnarly had abandoned the sofa and was now sitting at attention in front of the door leading out of the cabin. “He’s just sitting there. What are you afraid of?” He waved his arm at Gnarly. “Git out of here! Back up on the couch!”

When he moved in closer to the dog, Gnarly charged to send both men running back into the kitchen and up onto the counter. Once they were in place, the dog returned to lay down in front of the door to block their escape.

“I don’t think he wants us to leave, Ernie.”

“You think so, Bert?”

The dog nappers lost the feeling in their butts by the time the burn phone rang. Seeing the caller ID read Mac Faraday, Ernie snapped up the phone. “It’s about time.” He could hear the half-time wrap-up of the football game he was missing playing in the background.

“Hey, Ernie, how’s this life of crime working for you?” Mac asked.

“I’m going to kill your dog!”

“Good luck with that. Have you got the money?”

“He’s got us trapped on the kitchen counter.”

“I guess that means no,” Mac said. “Too bad. I was looking forward to buying something pretty for my fiancée with this ransom. Well, maybe next time.”

Ernie let loose with a string of cursing.

“Now, Ernie, that’s no way to talk to your victim,” Mac said. “Gotta go. Kick-off for the second half is about to start.”

“Who’s winning?” Ernie sputtered out.

“Who do you think?”

Ernie spewed out another round of cursing.

“I’ll check in again at the end of the game. You’re missing a great game.”

With another curse, Ernie threw the phone down onto the floor. It broke into pieces.

“What did he say?” Bert asked.

“Redskins are winning.”

“Damn! I’ve got five hundred on Pittsburgh. This day sucks, Ernie. It’s all because we kidnapped that dog.”

“That’s right. It’s that dog’s fault!” Ernie yelled. “He’s cost us close to four hundred dollars.”

“Not to mention the security deposit on this cabin since he tore up the furniture.”

“Forget the security deposit!”

“We might as well!”

“He’s making us miss the game,” Ernie screamed. “Hell! I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t his fault the Steelers were losing! I’m going to kill him!”

“How?”

Ernie realized the small bathroom, with a tiny window over the back of the toilet, was the perfect cell in which to place their captive. With an evil laugh, he picked up one of the cans of beer and shook it in Gnarly’s direction. The glint of the sunlight made the silver can sparkle.

Gnarly cocked his head.

“Want to play catch?” Ernie moved over to the bathroom door and opened it.

Gnarly stood up and moved in closer.

Ernie continued to shake the can to hold the dog’s attention. “Come and get it. Come on, boy. Let’s play. Fetch the can.” He tossed the can so that it rolled into the bathroom.

Gnarly gave chase. As soon as he was inside the room, Ernie slammed the door shut on him.

Gnarly let out a low bark.

“Now who’s the boss?” Ernie said with a loud cocky tone. He continued to laugh. “Let’s see what Mac Faraday has to say about paying up now.” He grabbed the phone and pieced it together to make the call.

The Steelers had just scored a touchdown to tie up the game when the phone rang in the home theater at Spencer Manor.

“I take it you got off the kitchen counter,” Mac said.

“We have your dog under control now,” Ernie said.

“Very good,” Mac said. “Only fifty percent of the dog nappers have ever gotten that far. I hope you didn’t lock him in the bathroom.”

Ernie was silent.

“Of course, you’re a smart man, Ernie. You wouldn’t lock Gnarly in your only bathroom. … Or would you?” After receiving no response, Mac said, “That’s okay. Forty percent of the dog nappers who decide to lock him in the bathroom don’t think about that either. Now, what are you going to do if you have to go?”

Ernie started sputtering.

“Listen, Ernie, you sound like a nice guy,” Mac said. “I like you and don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. So, I’m going to give you this piece of advice. Now, I don’t do this for all of the dog nappers, but like I said, I like you. Whatever you do, don’t go outside and drop your pants.”

“Say what?” Ernie said with a squawk.

“I said don’t turn your back on Gnarly and drop your pants.”

“Why?”

“The last dog napper who did that is still in the hospital.”

On the television, a Redskin player intercepted the ball from the Steelers. The crowd cheered.

Ernie was still translating Mac’s warning when he said, “Gotta go. The Redskins are going all the way for a touchdown!”

Click!

His gaze locked on the player running down the length of the field with the football, the police chief, carrying a platter of Buffalo wings, plopped down in his seat. “Is Gnarly locked in the bathroom?”

“Not for long.” Mac snatched a drummette from the platter and jumped out of his seat to cheer for the Redskin touchdown. After bumping fists with David, he dropped down onto the sofa and took a bite from the snack. “I hope Gnarly is kind and doesn’t finish them off until after the game.”

Ernie was alternating between pacing and stopping to cross his legs.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you, Ernie,” Bert said with a shake of his head.

“He’s quiet,” Ernie said. “Maybe he’s asleep.”

“I don’t think he sleeps,” Bert said. “What did Mr. Faraday mean about not going outside and dropping your pants?”

“He’s trying to psyche me out,” Ernie said with a growl. “Well, I refuse to be psyched out.”

“The lady at the Doggie Hut warned us about keeping our health insurance paid up,” Bert said. “And now Mr. Faraday said the other dognapper is still in the hospital. I think there’s something weird about that dog, Ernie.”

“He’s a dog!” Grabbing his crotch, Ernie danced.

“Wasn’t there a dog on the SEAL team that took out Osama Bin Laden?” Bert said. “Dogs can be pretty smart.”

Ernie squeezed his legs together and crossed them at the knees. “I refuse to let a dog make me pee my pants!”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Ernie, this dog ain’t like other dogs.” He lowered his voice. “I think he’s a demon dog from hell.”

Unable to stand it any longer, certainly not long enough to talk about it, Ernie tore out of the cabin and ran around to the woods behind the cabin. Leaping over a fallen tree, he  barely made it to the tree line before stopping and unzipping his fly to relieve himself.

The feeling of relief washed over him.

Then, in the stillness of the quiet of nature, he heard a familiar click. It was not the type of click that you hear when someone steps on a tree branch to break it. It was a metal click, like that of someone cocking a gun.

Leaning against the tree, Ernie turned his head to look over his shoulder.

What’s he doing outside? How—Ernie looked beyond where Gnarly was perched with his front paws on top of the fallen tree to the open bathroom window.

With his long tongue hanging out of the side of his open mouth, Gnarly looked like he was laughing at him—as he should with one paw placed on top of what Ernie recognized as his gun. Gnarly placed his other paw on top of gun at the trigger.

He wouldn’t. He couldn’t—

He saw Gnarly wink before jerking a claw to pull the trigger.

The football game was down to the two minute warning when the phone rang.

“That dog,” Mac said with a curse. “Why couldn’t he wait until the end of the game?”

“Maybe they can’t get the game at the dog napper’s place,” David suggested while offering Mac a brownie.

Mac snatched up the phone and placed it to his ear. “What do you want?”

“Your dog made Ernie cry.”

“How’s that my problem?”

“Mr. Faraday,” Bert sobbed, “come get your dog.”

“Do you have my money?” Mac asked.

“No, but … pul-eze,” Bert begged in a choked voice. “What kind of man are you? We’re only a couple of small-time criminals trying to redistribute the wealth of the rich who have it to the poor who are motivationally challenged when it comes to working for a living. It’s the American way! Pul-eeze! We’ll do anything you want!”

“Hey, your buddy Ernie set the terms,” Mac said with a small grin. “Where is Ernie?”

“He’s up a tree with his pants around his ankles,” Bert said. “Your dog shot him in the butt while he was taking a leak.”

“Caught him with his pants down, huh?”

“That dog is vicious! He doesn’t play by the rules.”

“That’s not true,” Mac said. “When burglars come to our house to play hide-n-seek, Gnarly always counts to one hundred before going after them.”

“Your dog chased me inside when I went out to help Ernie,” Bert said. “I had to leave Ernie up in the tree. I had no choice but to save myself. I thought he was going to kill me. What kind of dog is he? He’s supposed to be scared of us!”

“Where is he now?”

“I told you,” Bert said. “He’s up in a tree with his pants down.”

“I meant Gnarly,” Mac said.

“He’s got a gun,” Bert said. “He’s crazy!”

“Of course he is,” Mac replied. “I warned Ernie about turning his back on Gnarly and dropping his trousers.”

“I’m not talking about Ernie being crazy,” Bert said. “Your dog! He’s got me trapped in the cabin! He shot Ernie in the butt! What kind of dog shoots guns? You have to help us.”

“No, I don’t,” Mac said.

“Have you no compassion for your fellow man?” Bert said. “Due to our amoral psyche we are incapable of obeying the law. We deserve your understanding. Maybe if people like you offered mercy to people like Ernie and me for our social deficiencies instead of judging us when we threaten, rob, and steal from you, then we’d all get along more peaceably.”

“You really do believe that, don’t you?” Mac replied with a chuckle. “You and Ernie can think about that worldview while spending the night with your kidnap victim. See you in the morning.”

“Wait! Don’t hang up!” Bert blurted out. “We’ll rob a bank tomorrow and pay you anything you want!” He sobbed. “Please, Mr. Faraday! I’m begging!”

Mac glanced over at the television. The Washington Redskins were ahead by two touchdowns and David was finishing his second brownie.

The police chief shrugged his shoulders. “Is Gnarly done playing with his new friends?”

“I guess so,” Mac said before turning back to the phone. “Okay, Bert, here’s what you need do. Do you know how to say, ‘I confess …’”

The Washington Redskins won the game against the Pittsburgh Steelers: 36-20.

Bert and Ernie were waiting on the doorstep of the cabin when the police arrived ten minutes after the end of the game. Bert was sitting. Ernie was bent of the porch rail. Both men were sobbing.

Gnarly gave up his weapon after Mac gave him a bone stuffed with peanut butter.

Mac and Gnarly beat Archie home by five minutes.

“Don’t say anything,” Mac warned Gnarly after he climbed up onto his loveseat with his new bone. “You know how she is. She’ll never let you out of her sight again if she finds out you got dognapped again.” He paused. “On second thought, it would save her several thousands of dollars a year if she stopped taking you to the groomer.”

Gnarly cocked his head at him.

“But then you’d stink and I’d have to give you a bath.”

With a growl, Gnarly dropped his head.

Dressed in a flowery lilac dress, Archie swept through the door. “Ah, it was a lovely shower.” She kissed Mac on the cheek on her way to greet Gnarly. “How was the game?”

“Great,” Mac said. “Redskins won.”

“Good.” She bent over to give Gnarly a kiss on the top of the head. “Did you have fun at the groomers, Gnarls?” A frown crossed her face.

“They gave him the works,” Mac said.

“What’s that smell?”

“Huh?”

“He smells like beer.” She brought her nose close to the dog’s snout. “His breath smells like hot dogs and cheese curls. I ordered peanut butter.” She whirled around to Mac. “What did you and David do to him?”

“Nothing,” Mac said. “It’s a new scented shampoo the groomer used. It’s called the pub scent.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” she said. “Take him back.” With a wave of her hand, she ordered the two of them out the door. “I want a redo.”

A smile crept to the corners of Mac’s lips. “Back to the groomer, Gnarly.”

The End

A GNARLY CHRISTMAS

A GNARLY MYSTERY SHORT STORY

“Mac, don’t you think you’re kind of old to be learning how to cook a turkey?” Chomping on a Christmas cookie, Police Chief David O’Callaghan sat on top of the kitchen table with his feet on the seat of one of the chairs. “With all your millions of dollars, you can hire someone to cook for you and Archie for every meal. Why bother?” He bit the head off the snowman.

His brown eyes on the rest of the snowman’s body, Mac’s German Shepherd sat in front of the police chief. In addition to the two-hundred and seventy million dollars and luxurious estate on Deep Creek Lake that Mac had inherited from his birth mother, world-famous murder mystery author Robin Spencer; he had also inherited Gnarly.

If anyone bothered to ask him, Gnarly would say Mac Faraday was only staying at Spencer Manor until the canine master determined that it was time for him to leave.

While David ignored him, Gnarly tried to will the cookie to drop into his mouth.

Mac Faraday slipped the top loop of the red apron on over his head and tied the strings behind his back. A Christmas tree adorned the top portion of it. “Being with Archie has taught me something. Cooking doesn’t have to be a chore. It’s an art. Have you ever seen the glow on her face when she presents a succulent meal?”

David’s blue eyes, which were identical to Mac’s, twinkled with mischief. “I thought you gave her that glow.” He popped the bottom half of the snowman into his mouth.

Unhappy at his failure to draw the cookie to him, Gnarly whined and stomped his feet.

“Haven’t you had enough?” David asked the dog.

Mac slipped red and green oven mitts, made in the shape of Christmas trees, onto both hands. “I still can’t believe Archie paid thirty dollars for a plate of doggie cookies for his stocking. Have you ever heard of a dog getting a Christmas stocking?”

“Did he eat all the cookies in one sitting?” David asked.

Mac shrugged while turning to the oven door. “He must have. When Archie and I came downstairs after getting dressed, they were all gone. You’d think he’d get a belly ache after all that.”

He opened the oven door. The pleasant scent of roast turkey filled the kitchen.

Inhaling the mouth-watering aroma, David stood up from the table to get a closer look at the main dish for their holiday feast.

As the chief law enforcement officer in Spencer, Maryland; David didn’t have the luxury of a day off. Only now, in the middle of the afternoon, was it his time to enjoy Christmas with his half-brother.

The turkey was the picture of perfection. The skin across the breast was a lovely golden brown.

Mac reached inside the oven and grasped both ends of the roasting pan. He lifted the pan and extracted the twenty-pound turkey out of the hot cavern. Pride filled his chest as he turned around to take the turkey to the table only to have his legs collide with the hundred-pound canine hiding in his blind spot beneath the heavy bird.

Mac tumbled forward.

The roasting pan tipped.

The hot cooked turkey, dressing, and juices poured out of the pan and onto the floor.

Gnarly dove for the unexpected—or was it planned?—windfall, scooped up the bird into his mouth, and ran.

At first, David let out a scream, followed by uncontrollable laughter.

Mac cursed and scrambled to salvage the dinner. After all, the thirty-second rule does count for something—especially when it pertains to a holiday feast.

With the turkey wings flapping away, Gnarly galloped out of the kitchen and through the dining room in search of an escape route. Body parts and drippings flew to create a slippery wake behind him. He made his escape through the front door when Archie Monday, the late Robin Spencer’s assistant, threw it open to send the dog out.

“Why’d you let him go?” Mac demanded to know after his lady love slammed the door to cut off their hot pursuit.

“Mac,” Archie scoffed, “really? What did you intend to do with that turkey if you did manage to catch him? Eat it?” Her emerald green eyes sparkling with laughter, she shook her blond head before opening the foyer closet to take out two coats.

“Did you see him?” Mac asked David. “Didn’t it look to you like he planned that? Like he purposely tripped me?”

David tried to stop laughing. “Mac, he’s a dog.”

“He’s probably sharing his Christmas dinner with Otis right now.” Archie put on her coat.

“Do you mean that fat squirrel that’s always taunting Gnarly?” David asked. “I thought Gnarly hated him.”

“It’s a love-hate relationship,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed how much fun Gnarly and Otis are having during their chase?” She poked Mac in the arm. “Don’t be so suspicious of Gnarly. It makes you sound paranoid.”

Giving up on the home cooked meal, Mac took off his apron. “Don’t forget that Gnarly used to be in the Army and they won’t discuss what type of training he’s had.”

“Like retrieval operations?” David laughed again.

Mac took his coat from Archie. “He’s been stealing a lot of food lately—more than usual. Something is up with him.”

“Why don’t you put him under surveillance?” David suggested. “You are an ace detective.”

“I may just.”

“Let Gnarly enjoy his Christmas.” Archie slipped her hands through both of their arms. “Dinner is never lost as long as you own the Spencer Inn, Mac.”

Minutes later, Mac, Archie, and David were on their way up Spencer Mountain to the five-star inn, and inn owner Mac Faraday’s private table.

They had assumed that Gnarly had scurried away with the turkey to indulge in his own private feast. Little did they know that the German Shepherd had company for the turkey dinner that was being served in the boathouse on the other side of the driveway.

The shepherd mongrel was curled up on a bed of life jackets that Gnarly had pulled down from their hooks. Her four newborn pups were sleeping when Gnarly came in with the stolen feast to set it before her. She had not thought it possible for him to outdo the Christmas doggie cookies he had brought her that morning. With her pups tucked in under her, she didn’t want to wake them by going after the food. So Gnarly dropped the turkey within her reach.

While the mother chowed down, Gnarly sniffed and licked the four little pups. They were a mixture of black, tan, and silver like their parents. After checking on each of the pups, Gnarly lied down next to their mother and kissed her on the head.

They were about to indulge in an afternoon nap when a scream from far away reached Gnarly’s sensitive dog ears.

Starting out of her sleep, the mother pulled her pups closer and growled.

His tall ears at attention, Gnarly rose up and pointed down Spencer Point in the direction of the mountain. He listened.

There it was again. Rough voices, a woman sobbing, and a dog whimpering—a small dog.

Gnarly recognized the tone of the whimper in the same manner that Archie could determine when he was barking at Otis or the delivery man.

It was a small white Maltese by the name of Rocky and he was seriously frightened. Rocky was all bark and no bite. Once, he had taken a chance to run out into the road to bite Gnarly on the tail. With one shake, Gnarly sent the little pooch flying, never to assert himself toward the large shepherd again.

Gnarly slipped out through the cracked open door and ran down the point toward the big blue home down at the corner. The German Shepherd noticed the black van parked out on the road. With the luxurious homes’ spacious garages and driveways, it was unusual for visitors to park their vehicles on the street.

Gnarly smelled trouble.

“We have a problem,” the man in black said into his cell phone while pacing around the dining room table at which the elderly couple were bound. His rough unshaven face and black eyes were as intimidating as the fifty caliber he held on Roy and Harriet Carlton, who were bound with duct tape to the chairs at opposing heads of the dining room table. “The old man won’t give up the combination to get into the safe.”

“You’re a pro, Schwartz,” the voice at the other end of the phone said. “Beat it out of him.”

The leader stopped to regard Roy with his bleeding lip and one eye swollen shut.

His fists clinched in preparation to continue the beating, a man wearing a blue bandana wrapped around his head stood over the elderly man. He waited for the order to continue.

“Vince has been beating him since we got here and he won’t talk.”

“Stubborn old man,” was the reply.

Harriet sobbed at the other end of the table.

“We’ll start beating the wife,” Schwartz said.

“Don’t waste your sweat,” the voice on the end of the phone said. “He’d give the combination to you before he’d give it to Harriet.”

“Well, then you have a problem,” Schwartz said. “Our payment for this job is in that safe. We don’t get paid, then we’re out of here. The job you hired us for won’t get done, which means you won’t get the money to pay off Burton, who will be very unhappy. Believe me, you don’t want to see an unhappy Burton.”

“Give me some time to think about it,” the voice on the other end pleaded.

The doorbell rang.

Schwartz and Vince whirled around to gaze in the direction of the foyer. “Who’s that?” Schwartz asked into the phone. “I thought you said no one would be here until six o’clock. Is it their other son?”

“We told you that we have friends and family coming,” Harriet said. “If you don’t leave now—”

“Stop lying, you old biddy.”

The doorbell rang again.

Their guns drawn, two of Schwartz’s crew came rushing in from the kitchen. “I thought this was supposed to be a quick and easy job,” the taller, more muscular of the two, said. He had tattoos of skulls and snakes all over his body.

Noticing the cans of beer that both men had, Roy asked, “Are you drinking all of my beer?”

The shorter, bald-headed one stood over him. “Do you want to make something of it?”

“Have some pity, will you?” Roy said. “My son is bringing his latest fiancée over. They’re talking about reproducing. I’m going to be needing that beer to get through dinner.”

The bald man asked, “Is she that bad?”

“She makes you two look like girl scouts.” Roy noted their intimidating appearance. “And I’m not talking about your personality.”

“Keep an eye on them.” Schwartz hung up the phone and went into the living room. Carefully, he peered out through the bay window onto the front porch. He could see no one on the other side of the door.

“Humph!” He opened the door a crack. Unable to see who could have rang the doorbell, he opened it all the way and peered out into the driveway and road in search of a vehicle, a suspicious neighbor, or anyone who could have somehow been clued onto the home invasion.

He slammed the door shut and stormed into the dining room while gesturing at the crew member with the snake tattoos. “Reggie, go search around outside. If you find anyone, kill ‘em!”

“No,” Harriet sobbed.

Reggie had searched out front before going around to the side of the home to the in-ground pool and bathhouse.

Nice!

During his search, he went around the edges of the pool. Across on the other side, he heard a low growl. Reggie stopped with his finger on the trigger of the gun to listen. The fifty-caliber semi-automatic was huge enough to scare most anyone into submission.

G-r-ro-owl!

Reggie stared at the bushes on the far side of the bath house. “Whoever you are in the bushes come out now.” With a wicked curl of his lips, he cocked the gun. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The bushes stopped moving.

He waited for his target to come into sight.

And waited.

And waited.

There was silence.

Slowly, his gun aimed at the bushes, he moved around the edge of the pool and approached the bath house. He waited until he was up on the bushes before pouncing on them.

Otis cried out before running up Reggie’s arm and bouncing off his shoulder, up onto the top of the bathhouse, upward, and onward into the trees surrounding the blue house.

“Damn fat critter!” Reggie shook off the fresh feel of the squirrel’s needle-like claws on his arms and rose to his feet. “There’s no one out here!”

He stomped over to the pool side and turned to the house. Sticking the muzzle of his gun into the waistband of his pants, he took only a couple of steps before he felt a rush of movement behind him. A hundred-pounds of fur and teeth collided with his upper back to knock Reggie down onto his knees.

As Reggie fell onto his knees, his finger pulled the trigger to send the fifty caliber missile through his gut and out his back.

After completing the round of leap-frog with Reggie, Gnarly raced for the back door and crawled under the outdoor lounging couch.

Hearing the gunshot that sounded like a discharge from a canon, Schwartz and his two other men ran outside with their guns drawn to take on the good guys. While they were racing out to where their fallen felon’s body was bleeding out by the pool, Gnarly scurried through the open door and made his way up the backstairs to where he could hear Rocky crying under his mistress’s bed.

Resembling a tiny white elf, Rocky was dressed in a green jacket with white trim and green booties on all four paws. The pampered Maltese yelped when Gnarly stuck his nose, followed by his head which was approximately the same size as Rocky, under the bed.

Seeing the strange outfit on the dog, Gnarly shook his head so hard that the tags on his collar jingled. After some low barks, Rocky crawled out and accepted Gnarly’s help in chewing off the booties.

Schwartz slammed the back door when he came in with Vince and the bald gunman behind him. He made a direct beeline into the dining room and stuck his gun in Harriet’s face. “Who else is here?”

Her eyes wide with fear, Harriet stammered before getting out an answer. “No one.”

“Someone just blew Reggie away,” Vince said. “No one just blows my brother away like that. He had to get the drop on him.”

“What about that son you were talking about?” Schwartz asked Roy. “The one with the scary fiancée? Where is he?”

“Andy?” Roy laughed. “Take out your snake man? Andy can’t even put his shoes on the right feet. I’d believe the fiancée taking out your man before I’d look to Andy.”

“Maybe it was her,” Harriet said. “She strikes me as the type to kill to protect her possible inheritance.” She asked Schwartz, “Is she the one you keep calling on your cell phone?”

Schwartz showed her his fist. “You just forget about who hired us.”

“Believe me,” Roy said, “if Andy marries Fiona, there is no way in hell she is ever going to see a penny of my money. I have a damn good lawyer who will see to that.”

Cocking his gun, Vince pointed his gun at Harriet. “I want the animal that killed my brother. Someone else is here and that someone is going to be dead. Give me a name or your wife is dead.”

“No one else is here,” Roy said.

“Someone is in this house!” Vince yelled. “You have until the count of three to give it to me. One.”

“You searched the house when we got here,” Roy pleaded with Schwartz.

“Vince and his brother were close,” Schwartz said with no emotion.

“Two.”

“But—” Roy said.

“Maybe Rocky!” Harriet blurted out.

Vince took his finger off the trigger. “Rocky? Who is that? Another son?”

“No, they only have two sons,” Schwartz said. “Who is Rocky?”

“Our dog,” Harriet said. “But he certainly couldn’t have killed Reggie.”

“He only weighs eight pounds,” Roy said. “He’s a little white yip yap. The worst he could do to anyone is give them a headache.”

“But he’s got the heart of a hero,” Harriet said.

“And the yap of a poodle,” Roy added.

“Where is this yip-yap?” Schwartz asked.

Noticing the bald-headed man had come back in from the kitchen with yet another beer, Roy said, “You really know how to hurt a guy, don’t you?”

“Stitch, go search the upstairs and every room in the house.” Schwartz took the can of beer from the bald-headed goon. “Find that dog. Don’t hurt him. Bring him here to me.”

“You don’t seriously think Rocky could kill one of your men?” Harriet whimpered when she saw the bald headed man take out his gun and leave for his search.

“No.” Schwartz leaned over her. “But I do think that the little yip-yap might have some leverage in making you to convince your husband to give us the combination to his safe.”

“Whoever hired you doesn’t know us very well,” Harriet said tearfully. “Roy here would gladly give you the combination of that safe in exchange for shooting my Rocky.

“She’s right,” Roy said with a wide smile. “This may be a happy Christmas after all!”

Harriet looked up at Schwartz. “How much would it cost me to make you shoot him for me?”

“It won’t cost you anything once we get into that safe,” was Schwartz’s answer.

Stitch started his search with the study, where the family picture had been taken off the wall to reveal the wall safe, still unopened due to lack of a code that only Roy knew and was willing to take to his grave.

A quick glance under the desk revealed that the room was vacant. He stepped out into the corridor in time to hear a movement above him. Taking his gun out of his waistband, he rounded the bottom of the bannister and looked up the stairs.

Standing at the top of the stairs, Rocky, clad in his green elf jacket, yapped at him.

“There you are,” Stitch said in a soft voice. “You must be Rocky. Come here, boy.”

With another yap, Rocky bounced down two steps. Stitch came up the stairs. Just as the bald-headed goon was about to make a grab for him, Rocky turned and scampered up the stairs and down the hall.

Stitch gave chase.

At the top of the stairs, he saw Rocky run for the master bedroom at the end of the hall. There were three rooms along the hall. One was along the top of the stairs, with the bannister overlooking the foyer on Stitch’s right.

Stitch ran for the room at the end of the hall. As he past the room at the top of the stairs, he only caught sight of a black and tan blur that came racing out to slam into his body to knock him sideways.

Stitch’s body collided with the bannister. He teetered for a moment. Everything was a swirl while he struggled his senses after the unexpected assault. Bracing himself with his back against the railing, Stitch was still off-balance when the fur covered assailant body slammed him once more to propel him over the railing and down to the marble flooring below.

“Someone else is in this house!” Schwartz insisted while standing over the broken body of his second man. “This is not the work of any eight-pound yip yap.”

Stunned and furious, Vince picked up Stitch’s gun and tucked it into his pants and followed Schwartz into the dining room.

“Who is it?” Schwartz demanded of the couple. “Who do you know in special forces?”

Harriet and Roy regarded each other. “Maybe our chief of police,” the husband said. “He’s a Marine in the reserves.”

“No,” Schwartz said. “He went off duty at three o’clock today. Besides, if it was him, he’d have the whole force here and let us know it was them.”

“Mac Faraday was a homicide detective before he inherited his millions,” Harriet said. “He lives in the manor at the end of the point.”

“It can’t be Robin’s assistant, Archie Monday,” Roy said. “She’s a computer geek. She doesn’t do this type of stuff.”

“Archie?” Vincent asked.

“She’s a pretty green-eyed blond with great legs,” Roy said. “Not exactly your special forces type.”

“Great legs?” Harriet replied. “Since when have you been noticing Archie Monday’s legs?”

“Do you want me to kill him now?” Vince offered.

“You can’t kill him until we get into that safe.” Schwartz was shaking his head. “We watched all of them drive by before we came in. They were heading out.”

“Maybe Faraday and O’Callaghan are playing us,” Vince said. “Maybe they spotted us and doubled back.” His eyes narrowed with hatred. “Whoever it is, is playing us like a cat with mice.”

“Nah, it’s not Faraday or O’Callaghan,” Schwartz said. “Our hero has specialized training.”

“Whoever it is,” Vincent said, “I want him.”

“You can have him.” Schwartz checked his watch. “We’re running out of time. If we don’t get that combination soon and get into that safe and out of here, we’re going to have a lot more dead bodies on our hands and nothing to show for it.”

Vince took Stitch’s gun out of his waistband and cocked both of his guns. “This will only take a minute.”

“After you kill our residential renegade, find that yip-yap and bring him here,” Schwartz reminded him. “I want in that safe!”

As Vince took off up the stairs, Schwartz turned around to the couple. “So, how much do you really love that little dog of yours?”

“You can’t hurt Rocky,” Harriet said pleadingly.

From upstairs, they heard furniture smashing against the walls and floors. Continuous rounds of gunshot filled the air.

“Well, as you can hear,” Schwartz said, “Vince is very short on patience right now. I guarantee there will be no holding him back from wanting to take out his wrath on that little dog of yours … unless you cooperate.”

“Please don’t hurt Rocky,” Harriet said tearfully. “He’s just a sweet little dog who never hurt anyone.”

With a long horrified scream and a crash of a window, Vince’s body came flying down past the dining room window to land in the rosebushes outside.

Harriet, Roy, and Schwartz stared at the mangled and bloody body on the other side of the window.

“You said your son can’t dress himself, huh?” Schwartz asked.

“Nope,” Roy said.

“Must be Faraday.” Schwartz cocked his gun. “But he hasn’t met me yet.”

“Or maybe Rocky,” Harriet said. “He is the only other one here in the house.”

“Be serious,” Roy said.

“Rocky has been known to get territorial,” Harriet said. “Remember the time he bit Gnarly’s tail?”

“And Gnarly shook him off like a flea.”

Yap! Yap! Yap!

Schwartz tore his eyes from the dead comrade outside the window to turn around slowly. The sight that met his eyes was not what he expected.

There across the dining room floor, sitting in the kitchen doorway, was all eight pounds of him. In his green and white jacket, with his bright white fur, he looked like a child’s toy, yapping at the big bad gun man dressed in black and holding a gun that was bigger than his challenger.

“Oh, you must be Rocky,” Schwartz smirked. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Rocky continued to yap at him.

“Tough guy, huh?” His gun concealed behind his back, Schwartz stepped toward him.

With another yap, Rocky turned and ran.

“Come back here, you little furball!” Schwartz gave chase.

“Run, Rocky, run!” Harriet screamed.

Schwartz charged into the kitchen.

Rocky was nowhere in sight.

With the stainless steel appliances and chrome fixtures, the only place to hide was on the other side of the island. His gun ready to fire, Schwartz bent down to round the island. As he turned the corner, he heard the yapping. There in the corner, braced with his back against refrigerator, Rocky barked at the intruder.

“Sorry, Rocky, but I’ve always been a fan of big dogs myself.” Schwartz aimed the gun and fired at the yapping dog.

Before he realized what had happened, he dropped to his knees as the bullet ripped through his ankle from where it had ricocheted off the stainless steel front of the fridge.

What he had thought was Rocky was in reality his reflection from where he had been hiding behind the island.

Rocky ran into the open pantry as Gnarly flew out and over the island to come down on Schwartz.

Fighting off the dog that had his arm in his teeth, Schwartz rose up onto his feet and clutched at the knife block in search of a weapon to replace the gun he had dropped when he fell to the floor. Finally, he was able to grasp the handle of the cleaver, only to have that hand caught in the trap of the little Maltese’s mouth. Rocky shook his hand like it was one of his little rubber toys.

“Get off me.” Schwartz tried to shake him off while keeping hold of the cleaver.

Meanwhile, Gnarly had drawn blood on his other wrist.

Schwartz shook off the little dog and knocked him off the island onto the floor.

Gnarly let go of his arm.

With a laugh, Schwartz turned to throw the cleaver at the little white yip-yap. He brought the cleaver up high in the air. Gnarly jumped him from behind. His aim was high up onto the man’s shoulders. Schwartz lost his balance and fell to the floor on top of the cleaver. His weight plunged the blade deep into his throat.

“This is one Christmas that we’ll never forget,” Harriet proudly told Archie Monday. She hugged her hero, Rocky, while Archie doted on him with pets and cooing. “Whoever would have thought that such a little dog would have the heart of a big hero?”

“Certainly not me,” Harriet and Roy’s older son, Brad joined in petting the little dog. “I always thought he was more bark than bite. I’ve never seen him even bite anyone before.”

The Carltons’ older son looked at the dead man on the floor in the kitchen. David O’Callaghan and Mac Faraday were examining Schwartz from either side of the body.

“Would you have thought Rocky was capable of such a thing, hon?” Brad called to his wife, Sadie, who was staring at the scene while chewing on her strand of pearls that hung from her red turtleneck. Her face was as white as Rocky’s fur. “No, I certainly didn’t think so.”

David caught Mac’s eye. He peered down at where Mac was measuring with his fingertips the size of the bite wounds on Schwartz’s arm. Together, they looked up at where Rocky was lapping up the attention.

“You don’t think …” David started to ask. “Certainly, if another animal was here doing all this …”

“These bite marks are too big to be Rocky’s,” Mac whispered. “We have four dead bad guys. Evidence proves they were killed by an animal that was intelligent enough to plan and execute a plan to take them out. The only animal in the vicinity I know who fits that description is Gnarly.”

“And Gnarly was outside when we went up to the Inn for dinner,” David said.

Mac gestured from Schwartz to the body out by the pool. “I believe Gnarly is certainly capable of doing all this in defense of someone in trouble.”

“Well ...” David started to rise to his feet.

Mac reached out to grab his arm. “What are you going to do?”

“Tell the Carltons.”

“Why?”

“Because ...” the police chief stopped.

“The only animal anyone saw on the scene was Rocky.”

“You just said that the evidence proves—“

“What good does it do in proving that it was Gnarly,” Mac asked, “besides steal Rocky’s thunder.”

The two of them looked up at where Harriet was showing off her hero while feeding him one treat after another. When Sadie, at the urging of her husband, attempted to pet Rocky, the little dog snapped at her. The little dog’s action prompted a round of nervous laughter.

“It’s Christmas,” Mac said. “Let Rocky have the glory. I’m sure Gnarly wouldn’t mind.”

Agreeing, David stood up. “You are a very lucky family,” he told Harriet and Roy. “Home invasions don’t usually end like this.”

“We have Rocky to thank for that.” Harriet turned to her husband whose black eye and split lip were being tended to by an EMT. “All this kind of makes you want to treat Rocky with a little more respect, huh, Roy?”

“Oh, brother.”

“Oh, my God!” came a curse from in the living room. “What have you people been doing?”

Roy’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “Great!” His voice oozed of sarcasm. “Now our holiday is complete.”

A young man clad in loose fitting jeans and a Gothic shirt came rushing into the kitchen. “What happened? Is everyone all right?”

“It was a home invasion, Andy,” Brad told the younger man. “A gang of goons broke in here this afternoon, tied up Mom and Dad, and tried to beat the safe combination out of Dad.”

“Rocky saved us,” Harriet announced with great pride. “He killed all of the bad men.”

“I don’t believe it,” Andy said.

A feminine version of Andy, only with blue straight hair, sauntered into the kitchen behind him. “So is Rocky like possessed or something that he killed all these people?”

“Certainly not, Fiona,” Harriet said.

“Did they get away with anything?” Andy asked.

“The only thing that appears to be missing is Rocky’s doggie bed,” Harriet said. “But that’s okay. My hero deserves a much bigger one. As a matter of fact, I think he should start sleeping in our bed with us.”

“Now wait a minute,” Roy objected.

David referred to his notes. “Harriet, you had said that the leader, Schwartz, was taking orders from someone on his cell phone.”

“He said that his payment was in the safe,” Roy said.

“And if he didn’t get to complete the job then some man named Burton was going to be unhappy and no one wanted to see Burton unhappy,” Harriet said.

Mac knelt down next to Schwartz’s body while David asked the couple, “Do you have any thoughts on who he was calling?”

“He wouldn’t say,” Harriet answered.

Casting a suspicious glance in Fiona’s direction, Roy interjected, “Whoever it was knew about our family and our plans for today.”

“Did he have his cell phone when he went after Rocky right before he was killed?” David asked while Mac searched the dead ring leader’s pockets.

“Yes,” she replied.

Mac extracted the cell phone from Schwartz’s jacket pocket. “I think we should have no problem tracking down his leader.” He pressed the re-dial button on the phone.

David watched each member of the family for their reaction to the test.

Harriet and Roy eyed Fiona while waiting for a response from her. Instead of guilt, she returned their glares.

A phone could be heard buzzing in the room.

Brad was the first one who spoke. “Sadie, isn’t that your phone?”

“No,” she answered while clutching her bag closer to her body.

“Are you sure?” Mac asked.

Brad yanked the purse from her and opened it. He extracted the cell phone and looked at the screen. “Who is Schwartz?”

“The man your wife hired to rob your parents’ home and … kill them?” David asked. “Was that the plan?”

“Why?” Brad asked her. “We all loved you?”

“We have accepted you like a daughter,” Harriet said.

“Because we needed the money,” Sadie sobbed.

“No, we don’t,” Brad said. “We’ve been doing very well.”

“That’s what you think,” Sadie said. “Thing is, while you’re at work all day, I’ve been at that new casino they opened and … in the last six months … I’ve lost everything. I’ve had to borrow money from a loan shark just to make our bills. Killing your parents was the only way to pay him back. With our inheritance, we’d be flush again. We don’t even have enough money left to pay these hit men that Burton recommended. Their payment for killing your parents was all the cash and bonds they could find in the safe.” With spite, she glared at Rocky. “If it hadn’t been for your rotten little dog, it would have worked, too.”

“You’re certainly right, Harriet.” David took out his hand cuffs. “This is one Christmas none of you will ever forget.”

No one on Spencer Point was able to sleep after word spread about the little eight-pound hero that had taken out four bad men single-pawed.

“What are you doing?” Archie startled Mac from where she found him peering out the front window after they had returned home. “I thought you were coming to bed.”

“I just let Gnarly out,” Mac whispered. “That dog is up to something. I can feel it.” Throwing on his coat, he opened the door. “He’s heading down to the boathouse. I’m going to follow him.”

“So you’re tailing a German Shepherd now?” Archie hurried behind him. “You really need to get a hobby, Mac.”

“Quiet.” He shushed her.

Seeing Gnarly turn the corner to go to the boathouse, Mac pulled Archie down behind a bush. Once the dog was out of sight, they hurried up to the boathouse to find the door open.

“What’s he getting into now?”

Hoping to use the element of surprise, Mac rushed inside and threw on the light. The response was a couple of yelps. Cowering in her new bed, the mother dog tried to hide her pups. With a squeal of delight, Archie rushed forward to admire the new family.

Gnarly and Mac stared at each other.

“Oh, Mac, look!” Archie pointed out the turkey bones scattered among the life-jackets. “That’s where our dinner went. Gnarly stole the food for her. He must have been taking care of her.”

“This is what you’ve been up to?” The wind taken out of his sails, Mac knelt to look at the family. “How many puppies are there?”

“Four.” Archie held up a black, tan, and silver one for Mac to see. “Doesn’t he look just like Gnarly?”

Gnarly hung his head over Mac’s shoulder. “You and I are going to have to have a talk, Gnarly.” He patted the German Shepherd on the head.

Archie’s eyes teared up.

“Now don’t get all mushy, Archie,” Mac warned her.

“It’s Christmas,” she said. “This is the day that God gave the world His only Son. That’s what Christmas is all about. Don’t you see it, Mac? These are Christmas puppies. What’s a more glorious gift than a new life on Christmas Day!”

She gathered up two puppies and thrust it into Mac’s hands. “We’re taking them to the house. This boathouse is too cold.” Taking up the remaining two puppies, she rubbed one against her cheek. “I’m naming this one Rocky.”

“Ah, man!” Mac tucked the tiny puppies inside his coat to keep them warm, “Don’t go naming them or they’ll think they’re staying here at the Spencer Manor.” His objection fell on deaf ears. Archie, Gnarly, and his family were already on their way up to the manor to spend Christmas night together before the fire.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LAUREN CARR

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Thorny Rose, Lovers in Crime, Mac Faraday, and Chris Matheson Cold Case Mysteries—over twenty titles across four fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!

Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, crime fiction, police procedurals, romance, and humor.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband and two German Shepherds, including the real Sterling, on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Visit Lauren Carr’s website at www.mysterylady.net to learn more about Lauren and her upcoming mysteries.

CHECK OUT  LAUREN CARR’S MYSTERIES!

Order! Order!

All of Lauren Carr’s books are stand alone. However for those readers wanting to start at the beginning, here is the list of Lauren Carr’s mysteries. The number next to the book title is the actual order in which the book was released.

Joshua Thornton Mysteries

Fans of the Lovers in Crime Mysteries may wish to read these two books which feature Joshua Thornton years before meeting Detective Cameron Gates. Also in these mysteries, readers will meet Joshua Thornton’s five children before they have flown the nest.

1) A Small Case of Murder

2) A Reunion to Die For

Mac Faraday Mysteries

3) It’s Murder, My Son

4) Old Loves Die Hard

5) Shades of Murder (introduces the Lovers in Crime: Joshua Thornton & Cameron Gates)

7) Blast from the Past

8) The Murders at Astaire Castle

9) The Lady Who Cried Murder (The Lovers in Crime make a guest appearance in this Mac Faraday Mystery)

10) Twelve to Murder

12) A Wedding and a Killing

13) Three Days to Forever

14) Open Season for Murder

16) Cancelled Vows

17) Candidate for Murder

23) Crimes Past

Lovers in Crime Mysteries

6) Dead on Ice

11) Real Murder

18) Killer in the Band

25) The Root of Murder (2019)

Thorny Rose Mysteries

15) Kill and Run

19) A Fine Year for Murder

22) Murder by Perfection

20) Twofer Murder

The Chris Matheson Mysteries

21) ICE

24) Winter Frost (2019)

Anthology - Spring Thaw (Mystery Short Story Collection

ATTENTION BOOK-CLUBBERS!

Want to add some excitement to your next book club meeting? Are you curious about this mystery author’s theme regarding crimes from the past? Do you wonder where she picks up her inspiration for such interesting characters? What does she have planned next for Mac and Archie? Well, now is your chance to ask this international best-selling mystery writer, in person, you and your book club.

That’s right. Lauren Carr is available to personally meet with your book club to discuss Crimes Past or any of her best-selling mystery novels. Discussion questions can be found and downloaded directly from the book pages on her website.

Don’t worry if your club is meeting on the other side of the continent. Lauren can pop in to answer your questions via webcam. But, if your club is close enough, Lauren would love to personally meet with your group. Who knows! She may even bring her muse Sterling along!

To invite Lauren Carr to your next book club meeting, visit www.mysterylady.net and fill out a request form with your club’s details.

WINTER FROST

A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery

Featuring the Thorny Rose!

Chris Matheson’s Most Personal Cold Case Yet!

Things have finally settled down into a pleasant routine for the Matheson family. Chris’s daughters have adjusted to life on the Matheson family farm with their grandmother. Chris is enjoying taking care of his horses and activities with his book club, aka the Geezer Squad. He feels especially blessed to have a second chance with Helen Clarke.

All is going his way until he has a chance encounter in the city with his late wife—an encounter that ends with a dead international hitman and Chris on the run from a highly skilled team of assassins.

Teaming up with an ultra-secret government agent with a thorny deposition, Chris has to go off the grid to evade the unidentified forces out to kill him and anyone connected to his supposedly dead wife. Luckily, the members of the Geezer Squad are experts at “old school.” They can even teach a phantom a thing or two about old-fashioned investigating.

In his most personal cold case, Chris fights to uncover why the state department told him that his wife, the mother of his children, had been killed when she was alive. Where had she been for the last three years? And why would anyone send a death squad halfway across the globe to hunt down a low level state department employee? Not only that, but what is to become of his relationship with Helen now that he’s married?

Available for Pre-Order Now!

THE ROOT OF MURDER

A Lovers in Crime Mystery

Homicide Detective Cameron Gates learned long ago that there is not such thing as a typical murder case. Each mystery is special in its own right—especially for the family of the victim.

The murder of a successful executive, husband and father seems open and shut when the murder weapon is found in his estranged son-in-law’s possession. When J.J. Thornton agrees to act as the defendant’s public defender, he assumes his first murder case will be a loss.

Only the report of a missing husband proves that this open-and-cut case is not so simple. Strap on your seatbelts for a wild ride in this mystery that all started with a simple DNA test for a geneology website.

Coming Early 2019!

MURDER BY PERFECTION - EXCERPT

A THORNY ROSE MYSTERY

Jessica Faraday’s mind was swimming with doctors’ names, symptoms, diagnoses, and psychiatric case studies. With a heavy sigh, she shoved her laptop into its case.

“We have enough coffee left for one more cup.” With a broad grin, Carol, the study group’s host, stood in the kitchen doorway and waved the carafe.

The medical students paused in gathering their materials scattered around the living room to make jokes.

“One more cup of coffee and I’ll be swimming home,” Jessica told Carol while reaching for her laptop case. When her fingers brushed across the back of a man’s hand, she let out a shriek that drew the attention of her friends. She jerked around to find Brett Wagner holding out the case to her.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, Jessica.” The slender young man, with reddish-brown hair and a closely cropped beard and mustache flashed his bright white toothy grin at her. “Here you go.”

“Thank you, Brett.” She slipped her laptop into the bag and rose to her feet. “All that caffeine made me jumpy.”

“Then we won’t have to worry about you falling asleep while driving home.” Brett fell in step with her and the rest of the students flowing through the townhome’s dining room to the stairs leading down to the foyer. “Speaking of driving—”

“It’s awfully late, Brett.” Carol’s roommate, Selena seemed to jump out from behind the dining room doorway to intercept the medical student.

A recent college graduate from the Midwest, Selena had moved to Washington to begin her career at one of the many federal agencies in the area. Barely over five feet tall and not more than a hundred pounds, she looked like she was twelve. She had usually made herself scarce during their study sessions—until Brett showed an interest in her.

“Would you like a ride home?” she asked.

Anxious to get home to her warm bed, Jessica didn’t wait for Brett’s response. She quickened her pace to catch up with her friends migrating toward the street.

Carol bid her goodbye at the door. “When are we going to meet your hunky navy officer husband?”

“If you haven’t met him, then how do you know Murphy’s hunky?”

“The way you go rushing home to him,” Carol said with a grin. “You have yet to join us when we go out for dinner or drinks.”

“I got all of my partying and clubbing days out of my system before I started med school.”

“How long have you and Murphy been married?” Carol asked.

“A little over a year.”

“You two are still newlyweds then.” With a glance up the stairs to the main floor, she frowned. “Is Brett still upstairs?”

“Selena cornered him.”

Carol uttered a low growl.

“Selena’s new to the area, probably a little lonely—”

“And equally naïve,” Carol said. “Perfect target for Brett. Ashleigh kicked him out on his ear after she found out that he’d slept with Selena—here under my roof. When I decided to take in a boarder to help pay for med school, I should never have offered the room to a girl just out of college. I thought since she was working for the FDIC that she’d be a quiet geek.” She rolled her eyes. “She was until Brett got hold of her.”

“Ah, there’s nothing like drama to keep things exciting,” Jessica said with a sigh before saying goodnight to Carol. She trotted down the front steps to make her way to her car parked on a side street.

The night breeze made her shudder. In early March, the weather was vacillating between winter or spring. That day, it had been sunny and cool. But after the sun had set, a chilly breeze had swept in to remind them that it was not quite spring yet.

The bright lights of Georgetown made it difficult for Jessica to tell if the sky was clear or not. Loud music and voices from what sounded like a college party drifted into the street from a nearby brownstone.

“Hey, Jessica! Wait up!” Zipping up his leather jacket, Brett trotted down the front stoop after her. Behind him, Carol closed the brownstone’s front door. “Where’s your navy guy?”

“Home.” She gasped when she remembered the pizza that she had asked Murphy to pick up for dinner. She glanced at her cell phone to check the time.

Six hours ago. He’s been keeping that pizza warm for six hours. I am so in trouble!

“If it’s not too much of an imposition…” Brett flashed her a pleading smile.

“I thought Selena was going to give you a ride home.”

“She offered, but—”

“What happened to your Beemer?” Abruptly, Jessica remembered that she had seen Brett driving a BMW convertible at other study group meetings.

“It’s in the shop,” Brett said. “It’s been a rough month. Ashleigh kicked me out—”

“For cheating with Selena.”

“Look, I made a mistake,” Brett said. “My Beemer broke down and I’m sleeping on a friend’s sofa until I can find time to have my new place remodeled.”

“Don’t tell me the details,” Jessica said. “I’m tired and I want to go home to my husband—who isn’t sleeping with my study group leader’s adolescent roommate.”

“She wasn’t an adolescent.”

“Goodnight, Brett.” Jessica pressed the button to start her purple Ferrari.

“Okay, so I won’t give you the details. But can I at least get a ride? It’s late… dark, chilly… His townhouse is only a few blocks from the Rosslyn metro…” His voice trailed off.

“Hop in.” She gestured at her purple Ferrari. “How long have you and Ashleigh been together?” she dared to ask once she had maneuvered the downtown Friday night traffic to cross the Potomac River.

“A couple of years. How’s your sailor handling you being in med school?”

“Murphy’s an officer—not a sailor.” She swallowed. “We’re still adjusting to our busy schedules. He gets sent out on temporary assignments overseas fairly often. Then when he is home, I’m studying. Is that what you and Ashleigh were dealing with? A clash of schedules?”

“And the stress,” he said. “Med school is expensive and stressful. We thought we were committed enough to make it work. I guess we were wrong.” He glanced over at her profile in the dim light of the sports car. “Guess we didn’t love each other enough to make it for the long haul.”

The news of Brett’s break-up weighed on Jessica’s mind on her way to the Faraday-Thornton home in Great Falls. They’d been together two years. Longer than Murphy and I have even known each other. Granted, Brett and Ashleigh weren’t committed enough to get married, but still…

Jessica tried to lift her mood by switching radio stations to find a catchy upbeat song—a dangerous process on the tight curves of the two-lane road connecting the Capital Beltway to and the suburbs west of the Washington Metropolitan area.

As luck would have it, she found a bouncy tune just as she passed through the security gate to enter the Faraday-Thornton estate, which they had named Thorny Rose Manor.

She rolled the Ferrari into her slot of their seven-car detached garage and pressed the button to turned off the engine. The combination of mental exhaustion and her mood took their toll to make her utter a deep sigh and slump.

She dreaded facing Murphy. Not only did she fail to go to the store, but she’d sent him to pick up two pizzas for dinner and then stood him up.

It wasn’t fear that held her back. It’d be easier if Murphy was one to lose his temper and yell at her. Then she could yell back—even though it was her fault. How do you argue with someone who doesn’t fight back? How do you fight someone who instead locks himself in the fitness room and beats up a punching bag for an hour or so? It’s not fair. That’s it. Murphy just plain doesn’t fight fair.

Nigel lit the pathway leading from the garage to the front door for her. Once she was inside, he turned them off. Their blue merle Shetland sheepdog, Spencer bounced up the stairs, yapping every step of the way, from the lower level to jump into Jessica’s arms and lick her face.

“I love you, too.” Jessica fought to put down her valise while peeling the squirming twenty-five-pound dog from her head and shoulders.

“Nigel, where’s Murphy?”

The IA’s deep throaty voice projected from the sound system’s speakers, which were strategically located throughout the house. “He is on the lower level watching a movie in the game room.”

Jessica followed the shelty down the curved stairs to the game room.

Resembling a crusty old rock mixed in with jewels, an old recliner rested among the chic furniture purchased for the new home less than a year earlier. The chair was as worn as the oversized Bassett hound occupying it. A forty-five pound canine couch potato, Newman laid in his chair—his usual spot.

This night, something was different. Instead of facing the wide screen television, he lay with his back to the screen. When Jessica entered the room, he regarded her with a steely glare and let out a breath filled with contempt.

It took a full moment for her to discover the reason for the dog’s displeasure.

An old Star Wars movie was playing on the television. Sound asleep, Murphy was stretched out on the sofa with the remote resting on his bare chest. Such was the problem. Murphy was in possession of the remote.

Jessica knelt in front to the sofa. Gently, she slipped the remote out from under Murphy’s limp hand and tossed it to the recliner.

Instantly, Newman turned around to face the television. With his nose, he positioned the remote and changed the station by slapping the remote with his paw. In a matter of minutes, Yoda the Jedi Master was replaced by Bloomberg giving an analysis of that week’s stock market.

Jessica studied Murphy’s face. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen.

The granddaughter of the late Robin Spencer, America’s answer to Agatha Christie, Jessica had spent a brief period enjoying the perks of being a rich socialite. She had many handsome men. They became history the instant Lieutenant Murphy Thornton flashed his brilliant smile with deep dimples in both cheeks and looked at her with those brilliant sapphire blue eyes.

Less than forty-eight hours later, Jessica threw in her socialite crown to become a navy officer’s wife and pursue her doctorate in forensics psychiatry.

Jessica felt a warm rush through her body as Murphy wrapped his fingers around hers. She noticed that he had opened his eyes slightly to peer at her. “Hey,” he whispered in a gravelly voice.

“Hey.” She kissed his fingers. “Sorry, I got held—”

He cut her off by pressing his fingertips against her lips. “That’s okay.”

“But I sent you to get some pizza.”

“I ate.”

“Mine?”

“Newman and Spencer ate it during episode two of Star Wars—after it turned into cardboard in the oven.” He sat up on the sofa. “I assumed you ate.”

“We had ordered oriental.” She rested her head on his knee. “I am so sorry, Murphy. I was getting ready to leave when I sent you that text. Then we got into that fight and you hung up on me—”

“I didn’t hang up. Nigel did.”

“Then someone started talking about the next chapter and we all ended up opening our books and the next thing I knew—”

She stopped when she felt Murphy’s arm drape across her shoulders. He held her eyes with his gaze. “It’s okay. I understand.”

“Is it?”

With his finger underneath her chin, he lifted her face to his. “Yes.”

“You were mad at me earlier.” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What happened? What did you do?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think—being here alone in this house,” he said. “One of the things I thought about was my first year at the naval academy. There was so much riding on me getting through the academy. I mean, my dad graduated from there. Our family’s reputation was on the line. On the very first day, when we were lined up in formation, they told us to look up and down the line at our fellow midshipmen. An average of fifteen percent of us weren’t going to make it to graduation.”

“It’s the same for medical school,” she said.

“They make it hard on purpose. If you can’t cut it, they want you out,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for the support of my family—doing everything they could to help me, I would never have made it.” He ran his fingers through her raven hair. As he gazed into her teary violet eyes, his voice deepened. “I promised to stand by you for better or worse. Between the stress and busy schedules, medical school is that worse and I am going to be here for you. If it means getting petrified pizza during Friday rush hour—” He grinned. “I’m a Phantom. I can handle that.”

“I love you, Murphy Thornton,” she blubbered as he took her into his arms.

Their mouths crashed together while he pulled her up onto the sofa with him. She wrapped her arms around his bare shoulders and straddled him. “You know what we should do?”

He pulled her shirt up over her head to reveal a lilac lace bra. “I have some definite ideas.”

She tossed the shirt aside. “We need to have a date night once a week. Our marriage is a priority and we need to treat it that way. One night a week, we go out to dinner or watch a movie together or—” She took in a deep breath. “—‘what not’.”

He brushed his fingers across her shoulders and down to her bosom. “Oh, I vote for ‘what not’.”

She brought her lips to his. “We haven’t done ‘what not’ in ten days.”

“So I heard.” He grasped her hips. “What do you want to do about that?”

“What not.”

The next morning, Jessica woke when Murphy got up and dressed before the sun rose. She tried to will herself back to sleep until at least when he returned from his run.

Upon seeing Murphy take his running shoes out of the closet, Spencer scampered across the bed and launched herself in his direction to beg him to take her along.

“Don’t worry,” he said in a whisper, “you can come, too.”

After dressing, he stood to the foot of the bed and took in the beauty that was his wife. Once again, he thanked God for bringing Jessica Faraday crashing into his life.

“You’re staring at me again,” she murmured without opening her eyes.

He knelt next to the bed and brushed a dark lock of hair from her cheek. “I love looking at you. You’re like one of those paintings in an art gallery. The more I stare at you, the more intrigued I become.”

“Intrigued or aroused?”

“That too.” He kissed her cheek and rose to his feet. “I’m meeting a friend to go running at the park. I should be back by nine.”

Anxious to embark on the run, Spencer stood up on her hind legs and clawed at him. He picked her up.

“I’ll cook breakfast then.” Instead of climbing out of bed, she pulled the comforter over her head and burrowed deeper among the covers.

Great Falls Park was only a short jog along the Potomac River behind the Faraday-Thornton home. Murphy and Jessica had worn a path to the treacherous trail that ran dangerously close to a steep rocky drop-off along a rapid portion of the river. The path led to Great Falls Park, at which point the national park service provided barricades and railings to protect runners from tumbling into the falls.

As soon as they reached the river, Murphy checked the time on his tracker to discover that he was running late. It was seven o’clock on the nose. Even at a run, he was going to be a few minutes late. Murphy and Spencer picked up their pace.

They reached the top of a hill leading down to the park entrance when Murphy heard a gunshot in the distance.

With a yelp, Spencer turned around and looked imploringly up at him.

Murphy recognized the sound. It was a gunshot from a semi-automatic handgun. He gathered up Spencer’s leash to keep her close and stepped up his pace to a sprint—practically dragging the dog behind him.

The edge of the park’s parking lot was in sight. There was one sedan in the lot since the park had opened only minutes earlier. As Murphy raced down the hillside, a figure dressed in a blue running suit entered the trail heading in his direction. Upon seeing him, the runner spun around and sprinted in the opposite direction.

“Wait! Stop!” Dropping Spencer’s leash, Murphy slid on his rump to the bottom of the hill and jumped to his feet to pursue the figure who turned onto another trail leading to the main road.

As he ran past the sedan, Murphy saw that the driver’s side window was shattered, and the front windshield was covered with blood. He heard the shooter fleeing down an alternate dirt path several feet away. Murphy raced after the assailant only to come to a halt when the trail broke into a fork. One branch headed toward the river while the other led deeper into the woods.

In silence, he strained to listen for any sound to tell him which way to go. Hearing none, he ran back to the parking lot where he found Spencer whining and pacing with her leash dragging behind her at the end of the path. Not wanting her to walk through the broken glass, Murphy picked her up and tucked her under his arm before stepping up to the car.

Ross Caldwell was slumped across the middle console into the passenger seat.

“Ross? Ross, are you okay?” Murphy said, even though he knew that his friend could not answer. The inside of the sedan was drenched in blood, bone, and human tissue.

“Ross?” a feminine filtered voice called out breathlessly from inside the SUV. “Are you still there? What was that noise?”

Careful not to touch anything, Murphy peered through the broken window to locate the source of the voice. It sounded like it was coming from a cell phone.

“Ross, you’re scaring me,” she said in a loud filtered voice. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Finally, Murphy located the cell phone lying on the floor on the passenger side of the car. He jogged around to the other side of the SUV, pulled his sleeve down to cover his hand, and carefully opened the passenger side door.

“Ross baby, speak to me!” She was hysterical when Murphy picked up the phone and put it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Who is this and what have you done to my husband?”

“I apologize, Ma’am,” he replied in an official tone. “I’m Lieutenant Murphy Thornton, United States Navy, assigned to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.”

“What’s happened to Ross? I had called him to tell him to stop at the store to pick up bird seed on his way home. Then I heard a loud bang. What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am—”

“Oh, Ross! My Ross! No!” She broke down.

Who killed Dr. Ross Caldwell? Join Jessica and Murphy, the Thorny Rose detectives, as they investigate their latest case, Murder by Perfection. Read in ebook or paperback, or listen in audiobook today!