Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery)

Blast from the Past

A Mac Faraday Mystery

By

Lauren Carr

Blast from the Past (Book Information)

All Rights Reserved © 2012 by Lauren Carr

Published by Acorn Book Services for E-Publication

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

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writerlaurencarr
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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.

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Published in the United States of America 

Dedication

To Our Men and Woman of Law Enforcement

On the Front Lines—You’ve Always Got Our Backs

Cast of Characters

(in order of appearance)

Tommy Cruze:
Head of a major East Coast crime syndicate. Spent ten years in prison for murder.

Archie Monday:
Personal assistant, editor, research assistant to world-famous mystery author Robin Spencer, who passed away two years ago. Lives in the guest cottage at Spencer Manor.

Mac Faraday:
Retired homicide detective. His wife had left him and took everything. On the day his divorce became final, he inherited $270 million and an estate on Deep Creek Lake from his birth mother, Robin Spencer.

Gnarly:
Mac Faraday’s German shepherd. Another part of his inheritance from Robin Spencer. Gnarly used to belong to the United States Army, who refuses to talk about him.

David O’Callaghan:
Spencer police chief. Son of the late police chief, Patrick O’Callaghan. Mac Faraday’s best friend and half-brother.

Deputy Chief Arthur Bogart (Bogie)
: Spencer’s Deputy Police Chief. David’s godfather. Don’t let his gray hair and weathered face fool you.

Robin Spencer:
Mac Faraday’s late birth mother and world famous mystery author. She gave birth to Mac as an unwed teenager and gave him up for adoption. After becoming America’s queen of mystery, she found him and made him her heir. Ancestors founded Spencer, Maryland, located on the shore of Deep Creek Lake, a resort area on Western Maryland.

Police Chief Patrick O’Callaghan:
David’s late father. Spencer’s legendary police chief. The love of Robin Spencer’s life and Mac Faraday’s birth father.

Randi Finnegan
: United States Marshal assigned to protect Archie Monday.

Violet O’Callaghan:
David’s elderly mother. She suffers from dementia.

Butch:
Randi Finnegan’s ex-husband.

Wilson Terrance:
Chief of the United States Marshal’s field office in Cumberland, Maryland. He had been friends with J. Edgar Hoover.

Ginger Altman:
Administrative Assistant, United States Marshal’s field office in Cumberland, Maryland.

Hector Langford:
Spencer Inn’s chief of security. The lean, gray-haired Australian has been with the Spencer Inn for twenty-five years.

Leah Juliano:
Italian immigrant. Owner of Dockside Cafe, a gourmet coffee shop located on Deep Creek Lake.

Sari:
Leah’s six-year-old daughter. She doesn’t talk.

Special Agent Sid Delaney:
Special agent with the FBI’s organized crime bureau.

Special Agent Tony Bennett:
Special agent with the FBI’s organized crime bureau. No relation to the singer by the same name.

Alan Richardson:
Tommy Cruze’s high-priced lawyer.

Ariel Richardson:
Alan Richardson’s wife and law partner.

Tonya:
Spencer Police Department’s desk sergeant.

Dr. Dora Washington:
Garrett County Medical Examiner.

Russell Skeltner:
Half-owner of the Skeltner Cove Bed and Breakfast, surviving spouse of Mary Catherine Skeltner.

Mary Catherine Skeltner:
Half-owner of the Skeltner Cove Bed and Breakfast, located on the shore of Deep Creek Lake. Dies from a fall down the stairs. Or was she pushed?

Nora Crump:
Tourist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Wife of Gordon Crump. Witness, suspect, or supposed victim to what happened in the Dockside Cafe.

Gordon Crump:
Tourist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Husband of Nora Crump. Witness, suspect, or supposed victim to what happened in the Dockside Cafe.

Epigraph

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

— Oscar Wilde

Prologue

Campus Library, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland—Twelve Years Ago

Kendra Douglas could have sworn that she heard someone walking up in the library stacks. While her head told her that the footsteps she had heard were only her imagination, the pounding in her heart insisted that someone was hiding up there, and that he likely had a knife—a big, sharp knife.

She blew her blonde bangs out of her emerald green eyes, did a toss of her head to flip her hair back over her shoulder, and squinted up at the bookshelves in the loft above the librarian’s desk.

If I stare hard enough, I can see him.

No one materialized. With a perfect combination of fear, imagination, and bravado; she stood up from her chair, squared her shoulders, and stuck out her small bosom.

Guess I need to go up and check—the same way I have to every night when I close up the library.
She slumped.
  And, just like always, I’ll find no one up there.

Kendra sucked up every nerve she had and ascended the stairs to the loft.

What’s that?

She whirled around to search the shadows down on the main floor.

She listened.

Silence.

Will you stop scaring yourself, Kendra? You’ve got to stop reading all those Robin Spencer books late at night. It’s gotten worse since you took her class.

At the top of the stairs, she forced herself to stride bravely across the length of the floor while checking every aisle for stragglers—or, better yet, for killers to confirm that her sense of danger was not always her active imagination.

No one. See? Now grow some guts, lock up, and go home to bed. Maybe you should skip Mickey Forsythe tonight … but maybe not.

Excited about the prospect of finishing Robin Spencer’s latest book, a signed advance review copy that the author had given her as a gift, Kendra hurried to check every corner of the library without fear. She was in too big of a rush to be scared.

You are one weird girl, Kendra. How many graduate students fall in love with a fictional character? You do know Mickey Forsythe isn’t real, don’t you? At this rate, as long as you’re looking for a man like Mickey Forsythe, you can give up on ever getting married. He ain’t real.

After tossing her book bag over her shoulder, she stopped at the front door, turned to do one last visual sweep of the main floor, switched on the security system, and stepped outside into the cold night air.

Kendra pulled up the hood on her winter coat to block out the bitter February wind. A jog to her car in the student parking lot would pump her blood and stop the chill that made her teeth chatter. For further protection against the cold, she ducked behind the hedges that lined the sidewalk to block out the wind.

“No! Please!” a man’s pleading voice wailed from the parking lot. The cry was followed by a scream of terror.

Kendra stopped. She held her breath. She could hear men’s voices in the parking lot only a few yards away.

“You’re making a mistake!” A man was sobbing.

“No, you’ve made the mistake.” The other man’s voice was as cold as the wind biting her cheeks.

“Aahhh!” the other man cried out.

This is like something out of a Mickey Forsythe book. No, Kendra! This isn’t a Mickey Forsythe mystery. This is real. That man is really being hurt. What would Mickey do? Hide!

Ducking back into the shadows of the hedges, she made her way to the end of the sidewalk.

The man screamed in agony. He sounded weaker, as if he didn’t have much strength left.

Kneeling down to keep low, she clutched her bag and reached inside for her pepper spray. Slowly, holding her breath, she peered around the edge of the hedge. She swallowed to keep down the shock that shot up from her gut and through her chest in an attempt to escape in the form of a shriek at the sight she saw.

They were under a lamp that illuminated the parking lot. Across the parking lot, a white sedan was parked in one of the professor’s parking spaces. A long silver limousine had the sedan blocked in its space. A black van was parked on the other side of the professor’s sedan.

Kendra realized that the sedan belonged to Dr. Bert Reynolds. She couldn’t miss him. He had a reputation with the ladies. Two men held the professor by the arms while a third man beat him again and again about his head and body with a ball bat.

No longer was his handsome face so attractive.

“Listen, all you have to do is confess,” the man holding the bloody ball bat said. “If you would admit to bonking my wife, then we’d all have more respect for you.”

The parking lot light bathed his bald head so it shone like a white ball on a billiard table. He had the squat, muscular build of a gorilla. With his long camel-hair coat he looked like a dressed up ape.

Two other men dressed in black clothes stood off to the side watching the beating like a couple of spectators. Occasionally, one would make a comment to the other and they would both laugh.

Seeing that he was unable to fight anymore, the two men dropped Dr. Reynolds to the ground.

“Are you going to admit it?” Gorilla Man asked.

Kendra heard something, but she couldn’t understand what the professor said. Whatever it was, it displeased Gorilla Man because he slammed the bat against the knocked downed man two more times.

“Confess!”

Professor Reynolds rolled over and covered his face with his arm. Sobbing, he cried out indecipherable mumbled words.

“Excuse me, what did you say?” Gorilla Man bent over him.

Professor Reynolds gestured as he spoke again.

A smile stretched across Gorilla Man’s round face. “That’s what I wanted to hear. The truth.” He stood up. “Now, we can all respect you.” He went over to one of the goons. “You know what else, Dr. Reynolds? They say confession is good for the soul.”

The goon handed Gorilla Man a long silver pistol. It shone under the street lamp.

Seeing the gun, Dr. Reynolds wailed, “Please! I did what you asked! I have a wife and two kids.”

“Right now, your soul needs all the help it can get.” Gorilla Man emptied the gun into Professor Reynolds. He shot until it clicked to signal that there were no more bullets.  After handing the gun back to the man who had given it to him, he turned to the two men who had been watching from the side. “Clean this up.”