The Lady Who Cried Murder (A Mac Faraday Mystery) by Lauren Carr Page A

him, and we’ll do it. All of us together. I promise.”

Chapter Seven
    “What happened?” Catherine asked after they had moved into Mac’s private booth in the corner of the Spencer Inn’s lounge.
    “Mac lost control.” Ben shook out his napkin with a snap and dropped it into his lap. “You think Senator Palazzi circled the wagons before.” He shot a glare at Mac. “Now they’re really going to be circled, and circled tight.”
    “What happened, Mac?” Archie grasped his hand and squeezed his fingers. “You don’t usually lose control like that. I thought you were going to break his neck.”
    “I wanted to.” Mac resisted the urge to order a scotch and make it a double. “He brought up Robin. He called her a bitch and said he wanted to give her an attitude adjustment—with the back of his hand. She was my mother.” He shook his head. “It was strange. I had met her only once for one day and never knew until after she had died—but the rage I felt when he talked about her like that—I never expected to feel that way about her.”
    “You’ve gotten to know her,” Archie said, “through her journal, through us who did know her, through living at the manor and here at the inn. Even though she’s been gone, she’s become a part of you, and when he talked about her like that, your protective instincts took over.”
    “Are you sure he wasn’t jerking your chain?” Catherine asked.
    “Of course he was jerking Mac’s chain, and it worked,” Ben said. “I’m sure he met Robin, but knowing her, she would have put him in his place real fast if he tried anything with her. She had good instincts, too. She would have sensed him for what he was.”
    “You know who would know if Palazzi had tried something with her?” Archie sat up in her seat.
    “No one who’s alive,” Mac said. “She would have told Pat O’Callaghan. He’s dead.”
    “And if Pat was going to tell anyone, he would have told Bogie, his best friend,” Archie said.

    Anxious to find out what Bogie might know about his mother and Senator Harry Palazzi, Mac and Archie abandoned dinner to rush over to the police station. When they got there, they found the deputy chief and David eating their dinner of a takeout pizza while pouring over the forensics reports from Khloe’s murder.
    “Hey, have you eaten?” Bogie offered them some of the pizza.
    Realizing how hungry she was, Archie dove in while David reminded Bogie, “They just came from the Spencer Inn where Mac was rubbing elbows with Senator Harry Palazzi at a fancy shindig.”
    “Actually, the fancy shindig ended up being an all-star wrestling match when Mac tried to kill him.” Archie plopped down at an empty desk with a slice of pizza. In her sequined cocktail dress, she looked overdressed for her dinner.
    “You never were suited for high society,” David told him. “What happened?”
    “He brought up Robin,” Mac said.
    “What about her?” Bogie’s bushy gray eyebrows knitted together.
    “He wanted to give her an attitude adjustment with the back of his hand,” Mac said. “He called her a rude bitch.”
    “Robin couldn’t stand the air Palazzi breathed,” David said.
    “For good reason,” Bogie said.
    “Did he attack her, too?” Archie asked.
    Bogie nodded his head. “Oh, yeah.” Chuckling, he sat down behind his desk and started working the mouse on his computer. “He was a junior senator then. Robin had met him at a Washington, DC, fundraiser. He offered to give her material for her books by telling her about some of his cases from when he was sheriff.”
    In the search engine for images, Bogie typed in the senator’s name. “They were supposed to go to a dinner party, and the senator had asked Robin to come to his apartment in DC. She had picked up bad vibes from him, but thought that he had been a sheriff, which meant he had respect for the law. However, when he came into the living room wearing only his bathrobe, she realized her vibes were