Read The Murders at Astaire Castle (A Mac Faraday Mystery) for Free Online Page B

and crossed the driveway to join them. For the outing in the abandoned, and most likely filthy, castle, she was dressed in worn jeans and a sweater under a jean jacket. She had put on leather gloves with a matching cap.
    Seeing his favorite lady, Gnarly ran to escort her to them.
    David whirled around and grasped Mac by the arm. “Listen to me.” His fingers dug into his bicep. “If you truly love and care about Archie, don’t let her go with you. Order her to stay here.”
    “I can’t order Archie to do or not to do anything,” Mac hissed back at him.
    “What are you two talking about?” When she saw David glaring at Mac, she planted her hands on her hips. “Are you threatening to shoot Mac again?”
    “Still.” David didn’t take his eyes off him.
    “What’s going on?” Archie asked Mac.
    “David doesn’t think you should go up to the castle.”
    She laughed.
    “I’m inclined to agree with him,” Mac said in a quiet voice.
    Now it was Archie’s turn to glare at him. “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Then we have nothing to be worried about.”
    “Do you believe in evil?” David asked them. “Damian Wagner wasn’t a monster until he lived up there inside those castle walls. Then, evil consumed him and he did a really horrible thing. That’s why I’m begging you two not to go up there—or—at the very least, Archie, you stay here and let Mac, if he insists on going, check it out first.”
    Archie regarded David before turning to Mac for his reaction. Seeing that he was considering it, she said, “You can’t order me—”
    “I can tell Hector not to let you in the jeep,” Mac said.
    She turned to David. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Thanks a lot, David.” She whacked him in the arm with all her might, before storming back into the house. The force of her blow was so hard that in spite of his effort, David stumbled and grabbed his arm.
    Mac waited for the echo of the slamming door to stop ringing in his ears before he asked David, “Are you going to tell me what you experienced up there? What happened to your friend Riley?”
    “There are two theories going around,” David said. “Some of my friends who were there that night believe he was possessed by Nigel’s ghost, that’s the dog that disappeared after the Hindman murders in 1950.” David paused. “They say that because Riley came to the party dressed as the Wolf Man. Others say he’s dead and his ghost, still in the character of the Wolf Man, is up there on that side of the mountain.”
    “What about Damian Wagner?” Mac asked.
    David said, “I wasn’t involved in that investigation.”
    “But you did know Genevieve Wagner.”
    “Is there a list of my sexual conquests published somewhere?” David asked.
    “I’ve been hearing that it’s quite a list,” Mac said. “I’m beginning to think that you’ve developed a bad habit.”
    “You’re just now beginning to think that?” David replied. “Yes, I did know Genie Wagner in the biblical sense, but it was a fling. I was home on leave for a couple of months after my first tour to Afghanistan. She was hanging out at the pool at the Inn. We got together like two ships passing in the night and going in opposite directions. When her father was through with his book, she was moving to California. I was back at Quantico the Tuesday after Labor Day.”
    “Was she afraid of what was going on in the castle?”
    David slowly shook her head. “She was afraid for her father. That summer was his last chance to write his book. The publisher had advanced him another one hundred thousand dollars on top of his original advance. If he didn’t get the book written by the end of the year, he was going to have to pay it all back to the publisher, and he didn’t have it. She told me that she was afraid of what he would do if he didn’t get over his writer’s block.”
    “Desperation,” Mac said. “It’s driven more than one man to