Twelve to Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (15 page)

Mac answered slowly, “I think…Lenny is an exceptional actor.” Staring at the wall behind David, he sipped his coffee.

Each of them falling deep into his and her own thoughts, silence fell over the kitchen while they ate until the living room erupted into loud barks as Gnarly signaled the arrival of visitors. Molly’s paws dug into the granite floor until she caught traction and tore out of the kitchen. Judging by the tone in her bark, Mac was unsure if she was going after the visitors who had interrupted her nap or Gnarly.

By the time Mac reached the foyer, Molly was ambushing Gnarly from behind while he was in position at the front door to check out the visitors. She chomped on his tail and pulled him onto the floor. With a yelp, Gnarly whirled around to get an earful from the white German shepherd.

“Molly!” Chelsea yelled in a sharp tone from where she stood after following the ruckus. Instantly, Molly shut up and backed away, while glaring at Gnarly. “What’s gotten into you? Come here!” Chelsea ordered.

His ears laying on the side of his head, Gnarly slumped and gazed with big brown eyes at the other dog who returned to the kitchen with her mistress.

“She’ll forgive you.” Mac patted the German shepherd on the head before peering through the glass door to see two men in suits waiting for him on the front porch. He recognized one as Sid Delaney, a special agent with the FBI. The other was an older man who appeared to be the same age as Bogie, though much smaller. His face and demeanor seemed to be much more war torn.

When Mac opened the door, Gnarly shot out to give both men a nasal pat down to determine if they were friends or foes. While Sid greeted Gnarly with a two-handed pat and rub behind the ears, the older man stepped back and threw his hands up in surrender.

“It’s okay, Jeb,” Sid laughed. “Gnarly is one of the good guys. He’s chief of security here at Spencer Manor. Believe me, no one gets past this guy.”

When his snout picked up something on Jeb’s left ankle, Gnarly’s ears stood at attention. With his eyes trained on the visitor’s ankle, he sat down. Then he cocked his head and looked up at Jeb as if to ask, “Would you care to explain what it is you have strapped around your ankle?”

“I take it you’re packing?” Sid asked Jeb.

“I’m never not packing.”

Sid introduced his companion to Mac and Gnarly. “This is Jeb Winkler. He’s retired FBI. You were asking about the Lenny Frost kidnapping case. Jeb here was the chief investigator on the case. When the news hit about Lenny yesterday, Jeb started making phone calls and, after I started making phone calls on your behalf, we connected.”

Sid then turned to Jeb. “This is Mac Faraday, retired homicide detective, now millionaire playboy.”

“But you still work homicide cases?” Jeb asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“I’m not good at golf.” Mac gestured for them to come inside. He tapped the top of the dog’s head. “He’s clean, Gnarly.”

Assured that the visitors were friends and not foes, Gnarly escorted the men inside. Still unsure, Jeb lowered his hands and follow Sid into the mansion’s two-story foyer.

Special Agent Sid Delaney greeted Mac with a handshake and a chuckle. “I see you’ve really taken to this life of leisure since we last met.” In response to the confusion that came to Mac’s face, Sid tapped the collar of the bathrobe that Mac had forgotten he was still wearing.

“Oh, geeze,” Mac sighed. “I’ve been busy.”

“So I can see.” Sid tapped his own forehead to indicate that he noticed the bruise on Mac’s. “Lenny Frost do that to you?”

“Inadvertently,” Mac said. “Actually, this happened when Zachery Harris, formerly Drake, shot me in the back while trying to shoot Lenny.”

Noticing David with his black eye coming in from the kitchen, Sid chuckled. “You Spencer police are real badasses. Who gave you that shiner, O’Callaghan?”

“A girl,” David said with a chuckle while slipping his cell phone back into its case on his utility belt.

After Sid introduced Jeb to Spencer’s police chief, the retired agent said, “Don’t tell me,” Jeb said, “a wife decided to defend her husband on a domestic dispute call.”

“No,” David replied, “an attempted murderer resisted arrest.”

Inviting them to sit down in the living room, Mac explained, “She was Sela Wallace, formerly known as Sela Drake, Carson Drake’s daughter.”

Jeb and Sid exchanged glances.

“Then the rumors that I had been hearing while calling around are true,” Jeb said. “Carson Drake’s kids did kill the Stillmans in retaliation for duping their father into kidnapping Frost?”

“I was just coming in to tell Mac,” David said with a nod of his head. “Ballistics got a match on the assault rifle they found in Zachery Harris, a.k.a. Drake’s, car. The bullets from the murders, the pub, and Mac’s back were fired from that rifle.” He added, “They also found the remains of a wig with bright red hair in the burnt out car. That fits with the scenario of Harris committing the murders and wearing a red wig so that any possible witnesses would claim it was Lenny.”  

Shaking his head, Jeb rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “I knew Drake’s kids were obsessed, but I didn’t think it would come to this.”

“What can you tell us about the Lenny Frost kidnapping?” Mac asked.

“Why do you want to know?” Jeb replied.

“Same reason you were making phone calls yesterday trying to find out what was going on with Lenny,” Mac shot back. “The Frost kidnapping case was never officially closed.”

“Carson Drake and the ransom never turned up,” Jeb said. “Until that happens, the case is still open, which is why I was never able to answer any of the questions that the Drake kids had been asking me all these years.”

“What questions were they asking?”

“Why didn’t we investigate the Stillmans?” Jeb asked. “Truth is, we did. We investigated them very closely for years. For Pete’s sake, the last one to have the ransom was their son, Derrick. But, we could never find anything concrete to tie them to Lenny Frost’s kidnapping. And Lenny told us point blank that it was Carson Drake. Carson was the last one he remembered being with. He was the one whose voice he heard telling his accomplice on the phone that he had the money and that they were going to meet to split it before he took off. With that statement, we knew that Carson was in on it.”

“And yet,” Mac said, “Zachery Harris claimed Carson had been telling people directly before the kidnapping that Janice Stillman was going to represent him after this gig, which turned out to be the kidnapping.”

“That points to her being his accomplice,” Sid said.

“Have you found any real evidence to prove that she did dupe Carson Drake into kidnapping Lenny?” David asked.

“At this point,” Jeb confessed, “after all of these years, I’m willing to believe anything. This is one of those cases that pretty much broke my career. Yeah, Lenny was found safe and sound after breaking lose from where he was handcuffed to the bed and calling the police. But the kidnappers got away with a million-dollar ransom and now two people, who may or may not have been involved, are dead.”

“With or without evidence, what do you think happened?” Mac asked him. “Do you think Janice Stillman and her husband were in on it?”

Jeb looked from Mac to David to Sid in silence. He sucked in a deep breath and then let it out. “The situation had all of the ingredients for that to be the case. Carson Drake was a second-rate actor who wanted to be a star. He worked his way into the right circles by being a drug dealer. He supplied Lenny and Derrick. But he didn’t want to be a dealer all his life.”

The retired agent sat forward in his seat. Looking around as if to ensure no one was listening, he said, “Personally, I’ve always thought Carson Drake got something on Lenny that could have ruined his clean teeny-bopper image and tried to blackmail him. Some of my information did confirm that as a drug dealer, Carson did have access to that type of information and was not above using extortion to get his break.” The corners of his lips curled. “Do you remember Kate Coleman?”

Mac glanced over to David, who was nodding his head. “What about her?” Mac asked. “How is she connected to this case?”

“The length of a pop star’s fame is quite short,” Jeb said. “Janice Stillman was Kate’s agent. That was how she met Lenny Frost. Nine months after Kate’s show was canceled, her Porsche took a nose dive off an overlook in the Hollywood Hills.”

“I remember when that happened,” David said. “She was only nineteen years old.”

“Six months after that, Lenny Frost was kidnapped,” Jeb said.

Mac asked, “What does Kate’s death have to do with Lenny’s kidnapping?”

Jeb looked straight across to where Mac was peering at him. “After Lenny’s kidnapping, and after it hit the media that he had identified his abductor as Carson Drake, we started getting information about him. Kate Coleman’s sister called me.”

Jeb sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Kate, like Lenny, was into drugs. Carson was her supplier. According to Coleman’s sister, Carson Drake and Kate would do drugs together. One night, she had gotten so wasted that they had sex and Drake recorded it. Then, he held it over Kate’s head, threatening to send it to the media unless she got him a regular spot on her television show.”

“Did she?” Mac asked.

“Yes,” Jeb said. “But, as luck would have it, six months later the show was canceled. There was nothing she could do.”

“And the recording?” Sid asked.

“Never surfaced,” Jeb said.

“Did you see the tape?” Mac asked.

“No,” Jeb said. “Kate’s sister had seen Kate’s copy. Carson Drake had the master. She said that after Kate’s death, she destroyed the copy she had. Now here’s the interesting thing.”

“More interesting things?” Mac asked.

“I decided to look into Kate Coleman’s accident,” Jeb said, “and learned some things that had never been made public. The majority of the injuries that Kate Coleman suffered in that crash were postmortem.”

Instantly picking up the meaning of the actress’s injuries, David announced, “Kate Coleman was already dead when that car went off the road. Someone murdered her, put her dead body in the car and pushed it off that hill to make it look like an accident.”

Jeb nodded his head. “Not only that, but the driver’s seat in the car was positioned all the way back. Kate was five feet two inches tall. She wouldn’t have been able to reach the gas pedal with the seat that far back.”

Mac asked, “Could Carson have killed her because she threatened to ruin his career by exposing him as a blackmailer?”

“Coleman’s body was thrown from the car,” Jeb said. “At first it was assumed that she had been driving. The media had already been speculating about it being a suicide before the ME discovered that the injuries were consistent with her being dead before the crash. Her blood alcohol level was way above the legal limit,” Jeb reported. “Plus, she had cocaine in her system as well.”

“What was the cause of death?” Mac asked him.

“Blunt force trauma to the back of the head,” Jeb said. “She was hit in the back of the head with something.”

Mac noted, “You said Carson Drake was her supplier and they did drugs together. Did the police look at him for killing her for whatever reason?”

“Carson Drake’s name did come up,” Jeb said. “He had been seen with Kate earlier the night of the accident. But he had a solid alibi for during the kill window…Lenny Frost.”

“Lenny and Kate used to be pretty hot,” David said. “He was a couple of years younger than she was and talked about how crazy he was for her. He was broken hearted when she died—at least, he claimed he was.”

“Then he wouldn’t lie to give Kate’s killer an alibi,” Mac said.

“Unless Carson Drake was holding something over his head,” Jeb suggested.

“So, when Kate fails to make Carson Drake a star, he finds something to use against Lenny Frost,” Mac said. “Janice, who lost one client to this menace, Kate Coleman, decides to kill three birds with one stone. Get rid of Carson Drake, garnish publicity for her falling star, and make a nice profit to boot.” He sat back in his seat.

“Unfortunately, we can’t prove any of that,” Jeb said.

“If Carson Drake was blackmailing Lenny, what would it have been with?” David asked.

Jeb answered with a shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders. “Back then, a video of Lenny smoking pot would have been enough. But then, it was a known secret among his fans that he was heavy into drugs and was certainly no virgin.”

“Then if Carson exposed any of that, it wouldn’t have done much damage,” Mac said.

“Unless it was bad enough to have voided Lenny’s contract with the studio,” Archie announced while coming in from the kitchen.

Chelsea and Molly were directly behind her. Spotting the white German shepherd, Gnarly, who had been lying under the coffee table, bumped his head on the underside while scurrying out in order to escape. He climbed up onto the sofa next to Mac.

After Mac introduced the ladies to Jeb, Archie slipped onto the arm of the sofa where Mac was sitting. Between Gnarly and Archie, he was pinned in. “Most studios do have morality clauses in their contracts with their stars, especially when those stars have squeaky-clean images. Anything that could tarnish that image reflects badly on the studio. With Lenny, we’re talking about fifteen years ago when the show he was in was a clean sitcom. If all of those rumors about his hard partying had been made public, it would have sent his star crashing to the ground, which not only would have cost Lenny his career, but also would have cost the studio a lot of money.”

“As well as Janice Stillman, who received ten percent of Lenny’s bankroll,” Jeb said.

“So she had motive,” Mac said. “What else did you have?”

“If we had had anything, I would have arrested her,” Jeb said. “Basically, we had nothing. Derrick, her son, was with Lenny the night that he disappeared. But then, those two were best friends and were out partying every night. Derrick stated that Carson Drake was partying with Lenny when he left Lenny’s place that night. Lenny had a television interview the next morning. When he didn’t show, they found out that he and his car were missing. The studio was in a full panic by the time Lenny called to say that he had been kidnapped and his abductors were demanding a million-dollar ransom.”

“Lenny made the call?” Mac asked.

Jeb nodded his head. “They had left an envelope at the studio gate. It had a picture of Lenny tied up and with that day’s newspaper as proof that he was alive.” He asked them, “Have you read Zachery Harris’s book about the kidnapping?”

“No,” Mac said, “but he did give me a copy.”

“Read it,” Jeb said. “He tried to interview me for it, but I refused. I couldn’t be interviewed because I was involved in the case and it was still open. But I did read it. I wondered if he was any relation to Carson because of the hard line he took against the Stillmans. It was very biased, but I have to admit, he did have some good insight, stuff I didn’t know at the time.” He shrugged. “Still can’t make sense of what I’m missing. Must be because I’m getting old.”