Spring Break
Charlotte Douglas
SPRING BREAKDOWNIt's springtime again, and all P.I. Maggie Skerritt and her charmingly levelheaded business partner and fiancé, Bill Malcolm, can do is hope that rite of passage infamously known as spring break is quiet and painless. Luckily, as the week progresses, Maggie and Bill find the influx of college kids committing only minor offenses, albeit they're piling up like empty kegs at a frat party.If only life could remain that simple…While the tourists wreak mostly harmless havoc, the murder of a woman and her possible connection to a local politician grabs all Maggie's attention. And when that same connection leads her and Bill back to the unsolved case that changed–and still haunts–both their lives, Maggie suddenly wishes party patrol was all she had to worry about.
“Ms. Douglas brings the reader a heroine (Maggie Skerritt) we can empathize with and a mystery we can sink our teeth into.”
—Rendezvous Reviews on Pelican Bay by Charlotte Douglas
“I have a prediction, Maggie….”
Bill stood, set my mug aside and pulled me to my feet.
“What does Swami Malcolm see in my future?”
“You’re spending the night on a boat with a tall, dark man.”
“Dark?”
“Well, suntanned, at least. But just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace.”
I couldn’t resist teasing him. “You know what else they say?”
He tugged me closer. “What?”
“That by thirty-five you get your head together and your body starts falling apart.”
“I don’t feel a day over twenty,” he said with an irresistible grin, “and I’d guess that you’re just over eighteen.”
“Why eighteen?”
“Because that makes what I have in mind legal.”
He kissed me then, and all thoughts of murders and cold cases disappeared.
Charlotte Douglas
USA TODAY bestselling author Charlotte Douglas, a versatile writer who has produced over twenty-five books, including romances, suspense, Gothics and even a Star Trek novel, has now created a mystery series featuring Maggie Skerritt, a witty and irreverent homicide detective in a small fictional town on Florida’s Central West Coast.
Douglas’s life has been as varied as her writings. Born in North Carolina and raised in Florida, she earned her degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended graduate school at the University of South Florida in Tampa. She has worked as an actor, a journalist and a church musician and taught English and speech at the secondary and college level for almost two decades. For several summers while newly married and still in college, she even manned a U. S. Forest Service lookout in northwest Montana with her husband.
Married to her high school sweetheart for over four decades, Douglas now writes full-time. With her husband and their two cairn terriers, she divides her year between their home on Florida’s Central West Coast—a place not unlike Pelican Bay—and their mountaintop retreat in the Great Smokies of North Carolina.
She enjoys hearing from readers, who can contact her at charlottedouglas1@juno.com.
Spring Break
Charlotte Douglas
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
From the Author
Dear Reader,
In West Central Florida, spring and fall often arrive at the same time. In late February, as azaleas in dazzling colors burst into bloom and the air is laden with the scent of orange blossoms and confederate jasmine, deciduous trees drop their leaves. This juxtaposition of rebirth and the end of life is also reflected in the influx of college students to beach communities, where they vie with senior citizens for parking places and spaces on the sand.
This spring, as Maggie Skerritt launches her new career as a private investigator and plans her approaching marriage to Bill Malcolm, a ghost from her past has her looking back to a cold case that has haunted her for sixteen years. In this time of rebirth and renewal, Maggie finds herself surrounded, not only by young people on spring break but by death, as well. But Maggie, with the help of Bill and her former partner Adler, is determined to prevail. Enjoy spring break in Pelican Bay!
Happy reading!
Charlotte Douglas
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 1
Darcy Wilkins skidded into my office early Monday morning and closed the door. I looked up in alarm. Darcy, in all her years as a police dispatcher, had never lost her cool. And in the few weeks she’d served as receptionist for Pelican Bay Investigations, she’d been a model of efficiency and decorum. Today, however, she had the wild and crazy look of a die-hard rock ’n’ roll fan who had just sighted Elvis, alive and well.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Maggie.” Her voice was breathless, her brown cheeks flushed, her eyes wide and bright. “You’ll never guess who’s asking to see you.”
Why people tell you that you can’t do something, then wait for you to do it, I’ve never understood. “Okay, I give up.”
“Jolene Jernigan!”
I drew a total blank.
Darcy must have guessed by the look on my face. “You don’t know who she is.”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“You don’t watch daytime television?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Darcy shook her head. “Jolene Jernigan has been the star of Heartbeats for more than forty years.”
“Heartbeats? Is that a fitness show?”
I’d once caught Caroline, my older sister, sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons, but I’d never heard of Jolene Jernigan.
Darcy looked at me as if I’d been raised in a barn. “It’s the number-one soap opera on television. I watched it every day when I worked night shifts. Now that I’m working days, I have to record it.”
“So what’s this Jolene doing in Florida? Aren’t soaps broadcast live from either New York or L.A.?”
“Her character’s in a coma with her face bandaged because of an auto accident. Maybe she has a stand-in for a while.”
“Did Jolene say why she’s here in Pelican Bay?”
Darcy shook her head and made a tsking noise.
“For a detective, you don’t know much. She owns a fabulous vacation home on Pelican Beach.”
“And she wants to see me?”
“She says it’s urgent.”
I glanced at my bare desktop and my day planner devoid of appointments. “I suppose I can work her in.”
“Don’t forget to ask for an advance.” Darcy ducked out the door.
She was right to remind me. After twenty-two years as a police officer, I wasn’t yet accustomed to the business details of running a private investigation firm. I preferred that Bill Malcolm, my fiancé and partner in crime, so to speak, handle money matters, but he was in Sarasota on another case.
Through the open windows of our recently acquired second-floor office, I could hear the traffic idling on Main Street as it backed up from the causeway to the beach. The April breeze carried the scent of confederate jasmine and sweet viburnum tinged with car-exhaust fumes. The town had more visitors than you could stir with a stick, and half of them were young, horny and slightly inebriated. I recalled reading a complaint the British had made about American troops during World War II: overpaid, oversexed and over here. Apply that to these college kids and you had spring break in Pelican Bay in a nutshell.
Darcy returned, opened the door to my office and stood aside for Jolene to enter.
With luxuriant long brown hair, huge Italian sunglasses, and a tall, gaunt figure, the result of either good genes or semistarvation, the woman was a dead ringer for the late Jackie O. The cut and quality of her linen slacks, cashmere sweater and matching sandals would have made my sister, a world-class shopper, drool.
Darcy gestured to a leather club chair in front of my desk and, once Jolene was seated, asked if she wanted coffee.
The actress shook her head, and Darcy, looking as if she’d give her eyeteeth to stay and hear the woman’s story, reluctantly withdrew.
“I’m Maggie Skerritt. What brings you here, Ms. Jernigan?”
“The Internet.”
I swallowed my disappointment. If she needed cyber-snooping, she’d come to the wrong place. I was as technophobic as they came and had to hire a computer specialist in Clearwater to do my Web surfing.
“I need a private eye,” she continued, “and your firm is the closest one listed on the Web.” Her voice was low and husky, as if she’d been crying.
“Why do you need an investigator?” I’d get to the harder questions later.
She drew a deep shuddering breath. “My baby’s been kidnapped.”
“Your baby?” Recently turned forty-nine, I was no spring chicken, and Jolene had at least fifteen years on me. For her, childbearing age had to be a dim, distant memory. But she’d said baby, so maybe she’d adopted.
“Roger.” She muffled a sob and fumbled in her purse for a tissue. “He’s only three.”
Now she had my complete attention. “Have you notified the authorities?”
Her head snapped up, and I could feel the intensity of her gaze behind her dark glasses. “Are you crazy? And have it splashed all over the news?”
“Were you threatened?”
“Huh?”
“Did the kidnappers say they’d harm your baby if you went to the police?”
She shook her head. “No, I just don’t want the bad publicity.”
Jolene Jernigan was either the dumbest woman I’d ever met or I’d missed something. Or both. “Do you have any idea who might have taken your child?”
“Who said anything about a child? Roger’s my dog, an adorable pug.”
Bingo. The missing link. “How long has Roger been gone?”
“Since shortly after I had it out with that snotty little bitch.” She forced her words through clenched teeth, and her well-manicured nails dug into the expensive leather of her purse.
Snotty little bitch. “Another dog?”
“Of course not.” She yanked off her sunglasses and glared at me with red-rimmed eyes. Her perfectly plucked eyebrows lifted in an expression of perpetual surprise, and her skin stretched taut as a drumhead across her cheekbones, the obvious result of repeated cosmetic surgeries. Only the crepe lines on her neck gave away her age.
I dug deep for patience. “With whom did you have it out?”
“Grace Lattimore. She’s been my personal assistant for the past thirty years.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning, Ms. Jernigan, and tell me exactly what happened?”
Jolene rammed her sunglasses atop her dark hair, devoid of any hint of gray. She crossed her legs, bounced one foot like a metronome and leaned back with a sigh. “We arrived at my condo on the beach Friday. My character on Heartbeats will be in a coma for the next three weeks, so I finally have some time off.”
I made what I hoped were appropriate sympathetic noises and nodded.
“Gracie and Roger always travel with me. And my little precious loves the beach. He was so excited.” She frowned. “Unfortunately, when Roger gets excited, he loses control.”
I raised my eyebrows, picturing a pug on the rampage but going with the flow in order not to interrupt her narrative with more questions.
Jolene sighed. “He kept piddling on the rugs and furniture. By the end of the weekend, Gracie had her knickers in a twist. ‘I was hired as your assistant,’ she said, ‘not to clean up dog pee.’
“‘For as much as I’m paying you,’ I reminded her, ‘you’ll do whatever I ask.’ ‘If that means cleaning up after that mangy little bugger, I quit,’ Gracie screamed. Then she stomped into her room and slammed the door.” Jolene smiled and shrugged. “I didn’t think too much of it. Gracie quits at least twice a year. Then I give her a raise and she reconsiders. But this time was different.”
I nodded. After all that piddle, Gracie, apparently, had reached her limit.
“When I woke up this morning, Gracie was gone, and so was Roger.”
“And you think Gracie took him?”
“Who else would have? My condo was locked and the grounds are gated with the tightest security.”
Interesting, I thought. As much as Gracie had hated cleaning up after the dog, she’d taken him with her, apparently just to yank Jolene’s chain. “Did Gracie leave a note?”
“Nothing. She just left.”
“Did she take her belongings?”
Jolene nodded. “And Roger’s, too.”
I formed a mental image of the pug with a suitcase.
“She took his food and dishes and his box of Milk-Bone treats.”
“Sounds as if Gracie at least plans to take good care of him.”
Jolene jumped to her feet and paced the recently re-finished hardwood floor. “But he’ll miss me. His little heart will be broken,” she insisted with all the fervor of an experienced drama queen, before her expression hardened into something ugly. “I want him back.”
“Any idea where Gracie might have gone?”
Still pacing, she waved one hand toward the windows. “She has relatives in Largo.”
I grabbed a pad and pencil. “I’ll need their names and addresses.”
Jolene halted in front of the desk and gave me the information. “How soon can you get on this? I really miss Roger.”
“I’ll start right away.” Remembering Darcy’s parting instructions, I added, “Of course, there’s the small matter of a retainer.”
Jolene retrieved her purse from the chair and snapped it open. She extracted a checkbook, wrote a check with a flourish and handed it to me. “This should take care of it. And here’s my cell number.”
She rattled off the digits, which I scribbled hastily on the pad on my desk.
I rose and walked her to the door. “I’ll call as soon as I have something for you.”
After Jolene left, Darcy came in. “Did you get her autograph?”
“The best kind.”
Darcy’s eyes almost bugged out when I showed her the check for $10,000.
Later that morning, after fighting my way through tourist traffic to Pelican Beach, I checked with security at the condo where Jolene owned her penthouse and confirmed that Gracie had indeed departed by cab late Sunday night with Roger in tow. A viewing of the surveillance tape had given me a look at Gracie, who was short, plump and dowdy with cropped straight gray hair and wire-framed glasses. Roger was short, plump, smush-faced and light brown with a black face and ears.
I left the beach and headed to the address in Largo where Gracie’s relatives lived. What should have been a straight shot down Fort Harrison Avenue and Clearwater-Largo Road became a rat’s maze of work zones and detours. If you’re anywhere in Florida during tourist season, you can bet the shortest distance between two points is under construction.
Just south of Bay Drive, Largo’s main drag, I found the road where Frank and Ellen Lattimore, Gracie’s aunt and uncle, lived. The street’s frame bungalows, built in the thirties and forties and shaded by massive live oaks draped in flowing Spanish moss, were small but well maintained, and the lawns were neat and tidy. I pulled onto the crushed-shell driveway of the address Jolene had given me. There was no vehicle in the carport, and with its shades drawn, the house appeared deserted.
On the off chance that Gracie was inside, hiding out, I climbed out of my twelve-year-old Volvo, went up the front walk and knocked on the door to the screened porch. When no one answered, I knocked again, louder, thinking surely Roger, if he was there, would have made some noise.
“They’re not home.”
At the sound of the loud voice in my ear, I almost jumped out of my skin. I whirled around to find an elderly man standing directly behind me. Dressed in baggy shorts, a sweaty T-shirt and grass-stained sneakers and holding long-handled loppers, he had a short, wiry build and was as brown and wrinkled as a raisin. A battered straw hat covered his head.
“If you’re selling something,” he said, “or one of those come-to-Jesus people, you’re wasting your time.”
“You their neighbor?”
“Yup, and you are?”
“Maggie Skerritt. I work for Gracie Lattimore’s employer.”
His leathery face twisted into a grimace. “The actress.”
I nodded. “Have you seen Gracie? I have a message for her.”
“You’re out of luck. She arrived late last night, but the whole bunch took off early this morning. Even the dog.”
“The dog?” At least Gracie hadn’t ditched the pooch after she left Jolene’s.
“Ugly little mutt. Gracie had it on a lead, and they packed a dog carrier along with the rest of the luggage.”
“They were taking a trip?”
“Yup. I promised Frank I’d look after his place while they’re gone.”
“Did Frank say where they were going?”
The old man shrugged. “Said they were traveling across country to see the sights.”
I was good at tracking, but not that good. It’s a hell of a big country. “Did he leave a contact number, some way he can be reached?”
“I can give you his cell phone.”
“That would help. Thanks.”
He turned and walked toward the house next door. I trailed along.
“I hope Gracie knows what she’s doing,” he said over his shoulder, “dragging her pet along.”
“Why is that?”
“Frank hates dogs. Gracie’ll be lucky if he doesn’t make her leave that mutt on the roadside in the middle of nowhere.”
Great, I thought. It looked as if I was going to need the FBI and the SPCA if I intended to find Roger.
After obtaining Frank’s phone number, I drove to the nearest shopping center and found a pay phone inside Publix, the grocery store. Bill had been harping at me for years to buy a cell phone, but I hated the idea of everyone being able to reach out and touch me 24/7. For the first time in more than twenty-two years, I was enjoying life without the annoyance of a police radio or a beeper. And, so far, I’d always been able to locate a phone when I needed one.
Locating Frank Lattimore was another matter. Either his cell phone was out of range or he wasn’t answering. I hoped I could contact him before he dumped the dog. Although I’d never owned a pet—my meticulous mother wouldn’t have one in the house when I was a kid, and, as an adult, I was never home—I loved animals. With his roly-poly body, a gait like a drunken sailor, and a face like an aging prizefighter, Roger was cute in a grotesque way. I didn’t want him to end up lost or hurt. But then I’ve always been a sucker for kids and animals.
By now, it was late afternoon, so I called Darcy. When she reported no messages or other business, I cut her loose from the office and drove toward home, where I intended to spend my evening trying to reach Frank Lattimore.
My stomach was growling with hunger. I’d skipped lunch, knowing every food vendor and restaurant would be thronged with spring break crowds, creating at least an hour’s wait to be served. If Bill hadn’t planned to stay overnight in Sarasota, I could have mooched supper off him. He loved to cook and could produce a fantastic meal out of practically thin air in the galley of his cabin cruiser. The Ten-Ninety-Eight, named after police radio code for “assignment completed,” was where he lived at the Pelican Bay Marina. I, on the other hand, considered my refrigerator stocked if it held a couple of Diet Cokes.
The sun hung low over the waters of St. Joseph’s Sound when I pulled into the parking space at my waterfront condo. I tossed my blazer, purse and keys onto the foyer table, removed my gun and holster, kicked off my shoes and crossed the living room to open the sliders that overlooked the water. Fresh, salty air, a perfect complement to the natural wicker and rattan furniture and the blue-green sea colors I’d chosen for paint and fabrics, filled the room. Bill called my decorating style Florida tourist hotel, but I liked the soothing atmosphere. Until my job as a police detective had ended two months ago, I’d spent too little time at home in the twelve years I’d owned the place. Now, working as my own boss, I hoped that would change.
I tried again to reach Frank Lattimore’s cell phone with no luck and was headed to my kitchen, hoping supper would miraculously materialize in the refrigerator, when the doorbell rang. I opened the front door to find Bill standing on the front porch.
I don’t know which I was happier to see, him with his thick white hair, smiling blue eyes, and deeply tanned physique that would put any college boy to shame, or the two bags of Olive Garden takeout he was holding.
“I thought you were spending the night in Sarasota,” I said.
“I missed you. Besides,” he said as he hefted the bags, stepped inside and headed for the kitchen, “I knew you’d be hungry.”
“You know me too well.”
“Not half as well as I intend to.”
“What if you discover I only love you because you feed me?”
“Then I’ll know how to guarantee your affection for the rest of my life.” His grin was devilish. “And you’ll gain a hundred pounds.”
“Only if you brought tiramisu.”
“I did.”
“I think I’ll marry you.”
“I’m counting on it.” He unloaded the bags and was transferring food into dishes from the cupboards. “Want to eat on the patio?”
I nodded and picked up a couple of plates and some silverware to carry outside. “Too bad I don’t have any wine.”
“I thought of that, too.” He pulled a bottle of Chianti from one of the bags. “Can’t have Italian food without a good red wine.”
“You sure you don’t have an ulterior motive?” I asked.
“Of course I do. I drove back from Sarasota because I don’t want to sleep alone.”
I grinned. “The food alone would have worked. The wine is overkill.”
“Better to have it and not need it—”
“Than to need it and not have it.” I finished one of his favorite sayings for him.
Later, sated with linguine and too much wine, I leaned back in my chair and watched the sun drop toward the horizon. I told Bill about our newest case, Jolene Jernigan and the missing Roger.
“Frank Lattimore’s not answering his cell phone,” I said, “so, at this point, I’m stumped.”
Bill swirled the last of the wine in his glass. “It doesn’t make sense that Frank, who doesn’t like dogs, would agree to take Roger on a cross-country trip.”
“Maybe they dropped off the dog to be boarded,” I said. “I’ll start calling kennels and vets in the morning.”
We watched the sun disappear before Bill spoke again. “Have you talked with your mother lately?”
“You sure know how to throw cold water on a perfect evening.”
“I take it that’s a no?”
“You take it right.”
My eighty-two-year-old mother, with whom I’d never been close, had ostracized me from the family circle before Christmas last year when I’d arrested the daughter of her best friend during a murder investigation. Although I’d eventually managed to clear the woman and find the real killer, Mother was still miffed. She hadn’t even thanked me for her Christmas present, a gaffe that my socially correct parent would commit only under the direst of circumstances.
“You have to make the first move,” Bill said.
“I’ve been moving. I sent her a Christmas gift, and I’ve called several times. But Estelle—” Mother’s housekeeper “—always says that Mother is out or asleep or unavailable.”
“Priscilla’s not getting any younger. You’d better mend your fences while you can.”
“I would if I knew how. Mother’s never liked me, and I haven’t a clue why.” The shrinks would have a field day with me, pushing fifty and still at odds with my mother. “She never approved of my career in law enforcement, but her dislike started long before that. Even as a child, I relied on Daddy to run interference between us. I wish Daddy were alive now.”
“Try sending flowers.”
I considered his suggestion. “A few dozen roses and crawling from here to her place on my bare knees might do the trick.”
“Just don’t wait too long,” Bill warned.
He spoke from experience. His only surviving parent, his father, resided in an Alzheimer’s facility in Tampa, and hadn’t recognized Bill for the past few months.
“Can we talk about something cheerful?” I asked.
“How about dessert?”
“Great. Tiramisu always makes me smile.”
Bill gathered dishes to carry inside. “I’ll have to hit the sack soon. I want to get up early to beat rush-hour traffic when I return to Sarasota.”
My tiramisu smile widened. Good food, great wine, my favorite dessert and early to bed with the man I loved. It didn’t get any better than that.
CHAPTER 2
With both the dog and my dognapping suspect in the wind, I was back at the office early Tuesday morning, calling boarding kennels and polishing off a double vanilla latte and a fresh cruller from the bookstore coffee shop downstairs, when Dave Adler sauntered in.
Adler had been my partner before the Pelican Bay Police Department went belly-up, and I’d developed a maternal attachment to the bright young guy. I considered him the son I’d never had and also held a special affection for his wife Sharon and daughter Jessica, an adorable toddler fast approaching the terrible twos. Ironically, I felt closer to the Adlers than to my own family.
“What happened?” I asked. “The Clearwater PD finally give you a day off?”
This was his first visit to our new office, and he was glancing with interest around the spacious, high-ceilinged room with its tall windows that overlooked downtown with its quaint shops, the marina and the waters of Pelican Bay. “Nice digs, Maggie. How’s the P.I. business?”
I shrugged. “Bill and I are staying busy. He’s working background checks in Sarasota this week. He’ll be sorry he missed you. How’s the job treating you?”
His confident, cocky attitude faded, and his handsome face sobered. “I need your help.”
“You got it.”
“We found a DOA at Crest Lake Park before dawn this morning, shot sometime last night with a small-caliber gun.”
The mere mention of murder made my skin itch. “You’ve worked your share of homicides. Why do you need me?”
He pulled at his earlobe, barely visible beneath his shaggy sandy hair, and scowled. “There were only two items found in her purse besides her driver’s license and wallet. The first was a slip of paper with your name and address on it.”
My skin irritation increased as I wondered whether I’d known his victim. Probably just a prospective client, I assured myself, not someone I actually knew. “What was her name?”
“Deirdre Fisk.”
“My God.” I sank back in my chair and struggled to catch my breath. “I haven’t heard that name in sixteen years.”
Memories assaulted me, images of pale, bloated bodies on the medical examiner’s table, young girls not yet in their teens, who’d been sexually abused, strangled and dumped into Tampa Bay.
“How did you know her?” Adler folded his tall frame into the chair across from my desk and waited.
I took a sip of coffee. “Deirdre Fisk was the lucky one.”
“Not last night.”
“Remember the cases I told you about, the child murders Bill and I worked more than sixteen years ago when we were partners on the Tampa PD?”
Adler nodded.
“Deirdre Fisk was only nine years old then. She was abducted by the man we assumed was our killer and taken to a mangrove on the Tampa causeway. She probably would have been murdered like the other three victims, except a couple of guys fishing a few yards offshore heard her screams. They started the motor on their boat and headed for the beach. At their approach, her abductor shoved her out of his vehicle and took off.”
“Did she ID him?”
I shook my head. “You know how kids are. She described him as an old man, which could have meant anybody over twenty. And driving a big white car. She didn’t know the make or model. The fishermen saw only taillights as the man made his escape.”
“So the guy was never caught?”
“The close call either scared him off—unlikely, since sexual predators can’t control their impulses—or, more likely, he moved away, or was arrested and imprisoned for some other crime, or died. Whatever the reason, the child killings stopped, and Bill and I never caught our perp.”
Adler pointed to the hives I was scratching on my forearms. “That’s when those started?”
“My allergy to murder?” I nodded. “That’s also when I left the Tampa PD and moved home to Pelican Bay. I thought working at the department here would cut down on my homicide cases.”
Adler’s laugh held no warmth. “You sure got that wrong.”
Before the Pelican Bay Department had been disbanded and local policing had been assumed by the county sheriff’s office in February, Adler and I had solved four murders in as many months.
“Now I’m chasing dognappers,” I said. “Much less pressure.”
But I couldn’t help remembering the scared little girl with silvery blond hair and big blue eyes, who had shivered with shock and terror while I questioned her about the monster who’d abducted her. And now she was dead. “Tell me about Deirdre Fisk.”
“Not much to tell,” Adler said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Her family moved out of state after her ordeal. What was she doing back in the Bay area?”
Adler reached into his jacket pocket, extracted an evidence bag and slid it across the desk. “That’s the other item we found in her purse.”
I picked up the bag and read a recent newspaper clipping from the Tribune through the plastic. The article documented the presentation of a special scholarship to a Tampa teen by Florida’s governor. Accompanying the text was a photograph of the boy and his parents with the governor and, behind them, several other adults, whom the caption identified as members of the Florida legislature, including Juanita Menendez from Tampa, Ronald Warner from Bradenton, Carlton Branigan from Clearwater, and Edward Raleigh from Pelican Bay.
“Maybe Deirdre knew the teen or his family,” I suggested.
“It’s possible. But, according to the victim’s driver’s license, she lived in Pennsylvania.”
“That’s where the family moved after they left Tampa. Have you notified next-of-kin?”
Adler nodded. “Her parents are deceased. Her only living relative is an older sister Elaine, who moved back to Tampa a few years ago. I just came from her apartment, where Deirdre’s been visiting the past two weeks.”
“Did the sister say why Deirdre had my address and this news clipping?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out, but Elaine’s not cooperating.”
“You think the sister’s involved?”
Adler shrugged. “Hard to tell. She didn’t want to talk to me about Deirdre’s business.”
“So why come to me?”
“The entire department’s covered up with spring break,” Adler said. “We’re all working double shifts, dealing with traffic, drunk and disorderlies, and other minor infractions. Since you already have a connection with the family, I’d really appreciate your interviewing the sister. See if you can find out what Deirdre was doing on this side of the bay in Crest Lake Park in the middle of the night.”
“You got it. When’s the autopsy?”
“Tomorrow morning at ten. Want to observe?”
The Tampa children’s murders had haunted my dreams and frustrated my waking hours for years. Getting involved with Adler’s homicide case would either put my nightmares to rest or stir them up again. My love/hate relationship with police work and my obsession to catch a killer who’d eluded me for too many years won out.
“I’ll be there. It’ll be good to see Doc Cline again.”
Adler stood to leave. He paused at the doorway and circled his face with his finger. “Get your Benadryl refilled. From the looks of the splotches on your face, you’re going to need it.”
As soon as Adler left, I asked Darcy to complete the calls to local kennels and vets in search of Roger, and I headed for Tampa.
Driving across the Courtney Campbell Causeway that spanned Tampa Bay, I passed four locations etched in my memory. Three of the spots were boat ramps where a young girl’s body had been brought ashore. The fourth was where the fishermen had discovered nine-year-old Deirdre Fisk, naked, freezing and traumatized.
Unlike those dark, tragic nights that I shuddered to recall, the road today was drenched with light. Towering oleanders, bursting with white and pink blossoms and shimmering in the brilliant sun, lined the causeway. Vehicles bearing out-of-state license plates jammed every lane. Most cars were overflowing with young people, luggage and coolers, and many sported surfboards, boogie boards, beach umbrellas and folding chairs strapped to the roofs. Everyone seemed bound for a beach and in no particular hurry to get there.
By the time I reached Elaine Fisk’s apartment complex in Temple Terrace, it was after eleven, but I doubted the woman had reported for work on the day her sister had been murdered.
I parked in a visitor space, climbed the stairs to Elaine’s second-floor apartment and rang the bell.
No one answered, but I could hear sound from either a television or radio inside.
I rang the bell again. “Elaine? It’s Maggie Skerritt. Will you talk to me?”
Someone switched off the sound inside, and a moment later, the door opened a crack with the chain still on. I pushed my ID through the opening.
“I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I need to talk to you about Deirdre.”
The door closed. I heard the chain unhook, then the door opened again. Elaine Fisk blinked in the sunlight, her eyes the same pale blue as her sister’s, her hair the exact silvery blond, but uncombed and tangled. About thirty years of age, she was dressed in gray sweatpants and a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino T-shirt. Her feet were bare, and her face was swollen from crying.
“Come in.” She stepped aside, and I entered her living room.
The draperies were drawn and no lights were on. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. The apartment was filled with dark, heavy furniture, the kind many newcomers bring south from Northern homes and that doesn’t mesh with Florida’s bright sunshine and oppressive heat. A few knickknacks, porcelain statues and framed pictures cluttered the tabletops. Elaine motioned me to a sofa, turned on a lamp, and curled into a chair across from the couch.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “Detective Adler told me about Deirdre.”
Elaine, her eyes glazed with shock, nodded.
I glanced around the dreary room. “Is there anyone you can call to be with you?”
She hunched her shoulders. “Deirdre was all the family I had. My friend Katy’s working, but she’ll try to get off early this afternoon and come over.”
I hoped Katy could make it.
“I’m helping Detective Adler investigate Deirdre’s murder. Can you tell me why she was back in Tampa?”
Elaine gazed past me, her eyes unfocused. “She came to visit me. If she liked the area and it didn’t bring back the nightmares she had as a kid, she was planning to move so—” she swallowed hard “—so we could be together. Deirdre was lonely living in the big house in Pittsburgh after Mom and Dad died.”
“Why was she in Clearwater late last night?”
Elaine curled deeper into her chair and avoided my eyes. “I promised Deirdre I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
I took a full breath and spoke in my gentlest voice. “The only connection I had with Deirdre was when I investigated her abduction here in Tampa all those years ago. Was that why she wanted to see me?”
Elaine’s lower lip trembled. “I warned her not to stir things up again.”
“Is that why she was coming to see me?” I repeated. “About that case?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “But only if she was sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“That the man in the newspaper picture was the man who tried to kill her.”
“The picture in the clipping she was carrying from the Tribune?”
Elaine nodded again.
“Which man?” I asked.
She shook her head and twisted a lock of hair around one finger.
“I know you promised Deirdre not to talk about it, but you may hold the key to solving her murder.”
She appeared to consider my claim before finally saying, “Deirdre wouldn’t identify which man. She didn’t want to accuse anyone falsely. She said she had to see the man first and be certain it was him before she came to you with her suspicions.”
Deirdre’s body had been found in a park less than five miles from my office. Had she identified her assailant and been on her way to tell me? Or was she headed to Branigan’s house in Clearwater or Raleigh’s home in Pelican Bay and had met with foul play unrelated to the man in the newspaper photo?
“I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” Elaine said.
“There is one way you can. Do you have a recent picture of Deirdre I can borrow?”
Elaine removed a photograph from a frame on the table beside her and handed it to me.
I slid the photo into the pocket of my blazer. “I don’t know who killed your sister, but if it was the man who abducted her as a child, and if he thinks you might know about him, you could be in danger, too. Maybe you should move in with Katy for a while, until we get a better handle on what happened to Deirdre.”
She shrugged, apparently too numb with grief to feel fear. “I’ll see. When will they let me have her? I want to take her back to Pennsylvania and bury her beside my parents.”
“Detective Adler will let you know.” I took a business card from my pocket and handed it to her. “In the meantime, if you remember anything else or if you need me, give me a call.”
I stood to leave. Elaine remained huddled in her chair.
“Lock the door after me,” I said. “And don’t let anyone in you don’t know.”
An hour and a half later, I sat at the pass-through counter between my kitchen and dining room and ate leftover linguine for a late lunch. Then I called Adler to tell him what I’d learned from Elaine Fisk.
“Thanks,” he said. “You had better luck with her than I did.”
“I guess she trusted me because Deirdre trusted me. So what’s your next move?”
“I’ll track down Ronald Warner in Bradenton and the father of the scholarship winner. You think you could interview Branigan and Raleigh to find out where they were last night?”
“Sure, but who’s going to interview the governor? He was in the picture, too.”
Silence filled the other end of the line before Adler finally spoke. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Most politicians are guilty of something.” But I didn’t really believe the governor had been involved in Deirdre’s murder. If Deirdre had been looking for him, she’d have gone to Tallahassee, not Clearwater. “The governor’s a high-profile guy who’s been in the national spotlight for years. If he’d been her abductor, Deirdre, despite living in Pennsylvania, would have noticed television footage and newspaper pictures of him long before now. But even so, it wouldn’t hurt to determine his whereabouts at the time of the original murders.”
“I’ll get on it. Thanks for your help, Maggie.”
“No need to thank me. This is one case I’ve been wanting to crack for years.”
I broke the connection, then dialed the office. Darcy answered and informed me that she’d struck out on vets and kennels. No one had any pugs boarded, so Gracie wasn’t hiding Roger under an assumed name.
Jolene was not going to be happy with my lack of progress, but I owed her an update. Luckily, only voice mail answered on her cell phone, so I didn’t have to deal with her disappointment. I left a message, telling her what I’d discovered so far and that I’d be in touch.
With a Diet Coke in hand and the portable phone tucked under my arm, I pulled that indispensable investigative tool, the telephone directory, from a kitchen drawer and went out to the patio. My intention was to call every Lattimore in the book to see if Gracie had other relatives who could be taking care of Roger. But at the sight of thirty-five Lattimores listed in Upper Pinellas alone, I changed tactics.
Twenty minutes later, I was knocking on the door of Frank Lattimore’s neighbor in Largo. The Raisin answered, dressed much as he’d been the day before in grass-stained work clothes sans hat. His bald head was as brown as the rest of him. Many Florida retirees live for their yards, and, unless they hire a lawn service, in a climate that’s either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, and with soil that’s basically nutrient-poor sand, keeping a landscape green and well trimmed can be a full-time job.
“Now what?” he asked as soon as he recognized me.
I love a man who gets straight to the point. “Does Frank Lattimore have any relatives in the area, someone to contact in case there’s a problem with his property?”
“You still looking for Gracie?”
I nodded. “Frank’s not answering his cell phone.”
“He never does. He’s on one of those bare-bones calling plans. Only uses the danged thing for emergencies.”
“What if you have to get in touch with him?”
“He checks in with me every so often.”
“Have you heard from him since he left yesterday?”
The Raisin shook his head. “But you might ask Slim.”
“Slim?”
“Frank’s brother-in-law. Lives two blocks over.” He jerked his thumb toward the south.
“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“You didn’t ask.”
He had a point. “What’s Slim’s address?”
The Raisin rattled off the street and number and shut the door.
The drive to Slim’s house, an almost identical twin to his brother-in-law’s, took only a couple of minutes. As soon as I left my car and slammed the door, I knew I’d hit pay dirt. Inside the house, a dog was barking and throwing himself at the front door. When I rang the bell, the barking escalated, and the thuds against the door grew more violent.
“Roger, is that you?” I said.
For a moment, the noise ceased, as if the dog had recognized his name. Then the uproar continued, more fierce and frantic than before.
A woman’s voice cut through the hullabaloo. “Roger, stop that! Bad dog!”
Roger gave one last bark, as if to show who was really in charge, and silence fell.
“Who is it?” a woman asked.
“Maggie Skerritt.”
“What do you want?”
She didn’t open the door, and I didn’t blame her. Most women I knew didn’t open their doors to strangers, even in daylight.
“I’m looking for Gracie Lattimore.”
“Why?”
“Jolene Jernigan sent me.”
“Jolene can go to hell.”
“Are you Gracie?”
“Doesn’t matter if I am. I’m not talking to you.”
“You don’t have to,” I said in my most conciliatory voice. “Just give me Roger so I can take him home.”
“No way. I want her to suffer, just like she’s made me suffer all these years, the ungrateful hag.”
“She could call the police, press charges. Then you’ll be in a heap of trouble.”
“Ha! Fat chance. She’s too paranoid about bad publicity. At her age, she’s only inches from being canned by the producers. She causes them any problems, she’s history.”
Jolene didn’t need a private eye. She needed a hostage negotiator. I’d give it my best shot. “What can I do to help resolve your differences?”
Gracie’s reply was an anatomical impossibility, so I tried again. “C’mon, Gracie. Jolene says Roger piddles when he’s upset. He’s probably missing Jolene now, and you don’t want him ruining your relatives’ carpets.”
“Roger’s happy as a clam,” the disembodied voice behind the door said. “He never liked Jolene anyway.”
“Surely there’s something Jolene can do to get him back?” I was growing hoarse from shouting through the door.
“Yeah, she could apologize for treating me like dirt, but hell will freeze over first.”
“You know how it is working for someone else.” I remembered my days with Chief Shelton, who’d made my life miserable at every possible turn. “Sometimes you’re the windshield, but most days you’re the bug. That’s life. If you want warm and fuzzy—”
“Get a dog? That’s exactly what I did.”
“I was going to say go into business for yourself.”
“Yeah, right. I’ve got thirty years’ experience as a doormat. What business could I go into?”
I was more concerned about the dog. “You won’t hurt Roger?”
Her reply rang with outrage. “What kind of a person hurts a helpless animal?”
Too many that I’d met in my line of work. “Will you be staying here, so I can contact you in case I can come up with a solution?”
“Where else would I go? Thanks to Ms. High-and-Mighty, I don’t have a home of my own.”
I considered my options, but they were limited. If nothing else, I could stake out the house and grab Roger when Gracie took him for a walk, but she didn’t sound like the type who’d give him up without a fight. I decided to work on the apology angle with Jolene first.
“I’ll be in touch. And if you change your mind, here’s my card with my number.”
I slid the card through the mail slot in the front door. Firm jaws and strong teeth snatched it out of my hand. Roger’s, I assumed, but then I didn’t know that much about Gracie.
I’d have to pass near Carlton Branigan’s neighborhood on my way back to Pelican Bay, so I detoured into Harbor Oaks in Clearwater to question the state senator for Adler. Basically, I needed only to determine the man’s whereabouts the night Deirdre was killed. If he didn’t have an alibi, Adler would do the follow-up interview.
The tree-lined streets of the historical district were filled with homes from the same era as the Lattimore house, but all similarities stopped with the vintage. These residences in Harbor Oaks were stately mansions on acres of landscaped yards, not unlike the house where I’d grown up in Pelican Bay and where my mother still lived.
The Branigan residence resembled an English Tudor country mansion, complete with ivy-covered walls, mullioned windows, and a bronze stag with a full rack of antlers, standing guard on the sweeping front lawn. The Anglican effect extended to the tall butler with ramrod posture who answered the front door.
“May I speak with Senator Branigan, please?” I handed the man my business card.
“The senator isn’t in.” His snooty British accent fit the decor. He took my card and held it between his thumb and index finger as if it were contaminated.
“Is Mrs. Branigan in?” I said.
He looked annoyed. “Come in, and I’ll check.”
I stepped into a dim but impressive two-story foyer that showcased the soaring ceiling, timber framing, and a broad staircase that rose to a gallery across the back of the house.
“Have a seat.” The butler indicated a massive carved chair with a high back and velvet upholstery that looked like a throne, then walked toward a door at the rear of the foyer. His careful tread made no sound on the thick Oriental carpet.
I settled into the chair and looked around. Through a broad arch across the foyer, I could see straight through to the living room. Although the lighting there was also dim, a recessed ceiling fixture above the mantel threw a wash of illumination over a life-size portrait of a man in his mid-thirties with fair hair and a ruddy complexion. Dressed in an expensive three-piece suit, he sat in a chair similar to the one I now occupied and held an open book on his lap. His other hand rested on the head of a large dog, some kind of wolfhound. The man in the portrait was a younger version of the Carlton Branigan in Deirdre’s news clipping.
Surveying the elegant surroundings, I concluded that Branigan, who’d worked in city, county or state government as long as I could remember, certainly hadn’t suffered financially from being a public servant. That fact jostled a memory, a tidbit gleaned from my mother’s love of gossip. Carlton Branigan had married money. His wife’s family had owned most of downtown Clearwater and the southern half of Clearwater Beach at one time. Without the clout of official police credentials, I doubted the influential woman would agree to see me.
But I’d promised Adler, and I wouldn’t leave without determining where Branigan had been last night. With a sigh of resignation, I decided to play a card I usually kept well hidden in the deck.
“Excuse me,” I called to the butler as his hand reached for the doorknob.
He turned. “Yes?”
I imitated the tight, condescending smile I’d seen my mother use too many times. “Tell Mrs. Branigan that I’m Priscilla Skerritt’s daughter.”
CHAPTER 3
Wealth has its privileges, and apparently invoking Mother’s name had provided access to Stella Branigan. The butler returned quickly, and I followed him through the rear hall onto a wide flagstone terrace that ran the width of the back of the house. Broad stairs swept down to formal gardens and a swimming pool. Past the pool, a long arbor, covered in confederate jasmine thick with blossoms, led to a tennis court. Clearwater Harbor glistened beyond the seawall in the late-afternoon sun.
The elegant ambience made me uncomfortable until I remembered a saying I’d read somewhere that the upper crust is a bunch of crumbs held together by dough. In my former life as a librarian, I’d done a great deal of reading. But that was before my fiancé, a doctor in residence, had been murdered by a crack addict in the emergency room, and, as a result, I’d entered the police academy, determined to spend my life fighting crime. Working in law enforcement hadn’t left much time for reading. And between Deirdre Fisk and Jolene Jernigan, I was too busy now as a private investigator to indulge in my favorite pastime.
On the south end of the terrace, an older woman sitting at a glass-topped wrought-iron table looked up at our approach.
“Bring us tea, Madison,” she said in a low, cultured voice that rang with authority.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Madison returned to the house, and Stella Branigan waved me into a chair opposite her. “You’re Margaret Skerritt?”
“Yes.”
“I know your mother. We served together on the Art Guild board.”
She crossed her legs, leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. In her early sixties, tall and athletic with big bones and a long, horsey face, Stella Branigan would have been homely under other circumstances, but excellent makeup, a salon haircut and well-fitted casual clothes provided the illusion of attractiveness.
“How is Priscilla?” she asked.
“Mother’s fine. Still active.”
“But you’re not here to talk about your mother.” Her smile barely lifted the corners of her mouth.
“No. I’m helping the Clearwater Police Department with one of their investigations.”
She was still for a moment, and her carefully composed expression gave nothing away. She exhaled cigarette smoke. “We don’t have much crime in Harbor Oaks. Good security systems, Neighborhood Watch, and excellent policing deter most criminals.”
Footsteps on the terrace stairs below interrupted her. A thirty-something man, dressed in tennis whites and with a face like Stella’s but Carlton’s fair hair and ruddy coloring bounded up the steps. He stopped abruptly when he spotted me.
“Sorry, Mother, I didn’t know you had company. I came to invite you to have dinner with us.”
“It’s not a problem, darling. Ms. Skerritt will be leaving soon. Margaret, this is my son, Sidney. He lives next door.”
Sidney stepped forward and shook my hand. “I’ll wait inside until you’re finished here.”
“No need,” his mother said. “Our conversation isn’t private.”
He pulled out a chair and joined us at the table.
“It’s really your husband I need to speak with,” I said to Stella.
Stella shook her head. “Carlton’s in Tallahassee. He won’t be home until late tonight.”
“Was he here for the weekend?”
“No, he stayed at the Capitol for a fund-raiser last night. Now he’s taking care of loose ends at his office before coming home for the spring recess. Is there something I can help you with?”
I reached into my pocket and withdrew the photo of Deirdre Fisk. “Have you ever seen this young woman?”
I gave Stella the picture. She glanced at it, and a brief flicker that could have been no more than interest rippled across her angular features. But her facial expression was bland again when she handed the photo back.
“I’ve never seen her,” she said in a disinterested tone.
“May I see?” Sidney asked.
His mother seemed annoyed when I passed him the photo. He looked, but returned it without comment.
“Ms. Fisk didn’t come here looking for the senator last night?”
Stella stiffened. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. Just trying to help the Clearwater Police establish a time line on this woman’s whereabouts.”
“What makes you think she’d come here?” Sidney asked.
“She had a newspaper clipping in her purse with a picture that included the senator. We think she might have been trying to contact the men in the photograph.”
Sidney frowned. “Why?”
“She may have known one of them when she was a child,” I hedged. No need to bother Stella further. I’d double-check Carlton’s alibi, but, if he was in Tallahassee last night as his wife claimed, he couldn’t have killed Deirdre Fisk.
Madison appeared with a silver tea service, but I’d learned all I needed to know. I pushed to my feet. “I won’t take any more of your time. Thanks, Mrs. Branigan. Nice to meet you, Sidney.”
Sidney smiled somewhat distractedly. Judging from the impatience in his body language, I figured he was in a hurry to discuss something with his mother.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more,” Stella said. “Madison, please show Ms. Skerritt out.”
I followed the butler to the front door, then stopped and took out the photo of Deirdre. “Has this woman been here lately?”
Madison gazed at the picture and shook his head. “Mrs. Branigan only recently returned from Tallahassee.”
“When exactly was that?”
“I am not allowed to talk about my employers, a condition in my contract.”
“Thanks.” For nothing.
He shut the massive wooden door behind me, and I walked to my car.
The Clearwater Police Department was only minutes away. I arrived to find Adler working late. He was at his desk in CID and eating a foot-long steak-and-onion hoagey. Rarely had I seen Adler when he wasn’t eating, but where he packed the calories on his lean, muscular body was a secret many would kill for.
“Branigan’s wife claims he was at a fund-raiser in Tallahassee last night,” I said.
Adler wiped grease from his fingers and turned to his keyboard. With a few strokes, he accessed the Internet and pulled up a Tallahassee newspaper Web site. A few more keystrokes, and a news photo of Branigan and the governor, taken at Monday night’s party, appeared on his monitor.
“The wife’s story checks out,” he said. “You talked to Edward Raleigh yet?”
“Next stop,” I said. “What have you got?”
“According to this photo with Branigan, the governor was in Tallahassee Monday night, too. But I did some digging before you got here, and your Tampa murders occurred during his first run for office.”
“The one he didn’t win?”
“Right. But his publicity people released an itinerary for his appearances during that time. It’s in the archives on his campaign Web site. I cross-checked it with the dates of the original murders, and the governor was either in South Florida or the Panhandle when all three murders—and the attempt on young Deirdre Fisk—occurred.”
I nodded. “He was never high on the suspect list and eliminating him narrows our field.”
“The field’s getting smaller fast. Ralph Porter, my partner, tracked down the father of the teen who won the scholarship. He was in Gainesville with his son last night, scoping out the campus for the fall semester. The Hampton Inn confirms that the family checked in Sunday afternoon and are still registered.”
“And Representative Warner in Bradenton?”
“He wasn’t answering his home phone, so I called his Manatee office. His aide says the entire Warner family flew from Tallahassee to Big Sky, Montana, Friday for spring break. Gave me the name of their resort. I reached the manager by phone and he corroborates that they’re booked through next weekend.”
“So neither of us had any luck.”
“How about with your dognapper?” Adler took another huge bite of his sandwich. He must have seen the longing in my eyes. “Want some? I can give you half.”
“No, thanks.” I was still doing penance for tiramisu and would be counting calories the next few days. “I found the dog, but my client’s former employee is holding it hostage.”
“That’s easy enough. Have a uniform pick up the little beast.”
I shook my head. “My client insists on strict secrecy and no publicity. I’ll have to come up with another angle. Any ideas?”
“You could always send in Malcolm, disguised as Animal Control.” He grinned.
“Maybe, as a last resort.”
“By the way, I got a call this afternoon from Elaine Fisk to give me her temporary address and phone number. She said you suggested she move in with her friend for the time being, and she followed your advice.”
“Good. If whoever killed Deirdre did so to cover up three other murders, he’ll have nothing to lose by taking Elaine out, too, especially if he’s afraid she might ID him. But with all but one of our suspects from the photo with alibis, it’s looking more likely that her murder was random.” I nodded toward the case file on his desk. “Do you have any suspects from the park where Deirdre was found?”
Adler shrugged. “It’s a known hangout for drug users and dealers, hookers and homeless. A lot of those vagrants are mentally unstable. Deirdre’s wallet was empty. She could have been killed for a few bucks.”
“Or the killer could have taken her money to make it look that way.”
“We’ve canvassed most of the known regulars at the park,” Adler said. “Either nobody saw anything or nobody’s talking.”
“Any prints on the wallet?”
“Some smudged partials,” he said. “No matches in AFIS.”
I considered Adler’s description of the park’s seedy inhabitants. “There’s another possibility. Whoever killed Deirdre could have left her purse untouched, and someone else took her money before the cops came.”
The nerve endings in my skin went into spasms, and I reached into my purse for Benadryl caplets.
“The water fountain’s over there,” Adler said.
I crossed the room, washed down the pills and returned to his desk.
“So—” he dumped the papers from his takeout into the trash “—looks like we’ve narrowed our news photo suspects to Representative Raleigh.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to scratch, “if you don’t count the druggies, vagrants and prostitutes.”
“Let’s be optimistic. Maybe when you talk to Raleigh tonight, he’ll confess and save us a lot of trouble.”
I shook my head. “You know what they say.”
“What?”
“An optimist claims we live in the best possible world, and the pessimist fears it’s true.”
He grinned. “You’ve been at the books again.”
“Not often enough. I’ll see you at the autopsy in the morning.”
Afraid that once I reached home, I wouldn’t drag myself out again, I decided to ignore my grumbling stomach and visit Edward Raleigh before I called it a night.
When he wasn’t in Tallahassee, Raleigh lived on the edge of the golf course at the Osprey Country Club just north of town. I turned off Alternate U.S. 19 into the entrance of the classy subdivision, drove past the clubhouse that bordered Osprey Lake, and wound my way through the curving streets that followed the configuration of the golf course.
With my car windows down, I caught a faint whiff of orange blossoms from trees in the spacious yards. The hundreds of thousands of acres of commercial groves that used to overwhelm the county each spring with their heavy perfume were a thing of the past, victims of population growth and development, and the elusive scent made me nostalgic.
The sun was setting when I arrived at Raleigh’s sprawling Key West style home, and lights blazed through the angled Bermuda shutters on the front windows. A Cadillac with its trunk open was parked in the driveway, and a middle-aged man and woman stood at the rear of the car, holding pieces of luggage. I couldn’t tell if they were leaving or arriving.
I parked in front of the house, and they set down their bags when I left my car and approached them. “Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh?”
“Yes?” the man said.
I showed my ID, clearly legible in the light above the garage door. “I’m Maggie Skerritt.”
“I know you,” Mrs. Raleigh said. “You’re the detective who solved the Lovelace murder back before Christmas.”
“I was a detective. Now I’m a private investigator, and I’m helping the Clearwater Police Department with a case.”
“We can talk inside,” Raleigh said with warm hospitality and a politician’s smile. He probably figured me for a registered voter. “We’ve just returned from a trip to Mobile to visit our grandkids. Our grandson’s first birthday was yesterday. It was quite a celebration.”
“When did you leave Mobile?” I asked.
“Early this morning,” Mrs. Raleigh said. “We drove straight through.”
“If you can verify that, I won’t take any more of your time.”
Raleigh reached into the pocket of his shirt and handed me a slip of paper. “Here’s a credit card receipt for gas when I filled up this morning before we left.”
The service station’s address, time, and date stamp supported his claim. I handed him back his receipt. “Thanks for your help.”
“What’s this about?” his wife asked.
“Just trying to establish a time line on a woman who was searching for a man in a newspaper photo. Your husband was among them, but, if she came here, you obviously weren’t at home.”
I thanked the Raleighs for their time, got into my car and headed home. Apparently, Deirdre hadn’t been killed by any of the men in the photograph. But that didn’t mean that none of them was a suspect in my cold case from Tampa. Tomorrow I’d start digging into old records to see if I could connect one of the men in the photo with the murders I literally itched to solve.
When I arrived home, the message light on my answering machine was blinking. Hoping it was Bill announcing he’d finished his Sarasota assignment and was back on board the Ten-Ninety-Eight, I pushed Play.
Instead of Bill’s deep voice, I heard Caroline’s frantic plea. “Meet me at the hospital. Mother’s had a stroke.”
CHAPTER 4
Pelican Bay Hospital was only a couple of miles from my condo, close to the former police department, now a county sheriff’s substation. During the entire drive, Bill’s recent warning about reconciliation rang in my ears, and I worried that I’d waited too long to mend fences with my mother. If she died before I could speak with her, I would never have the chance to bridge the gap between us. I’d long ago accepted that I didn’t really like my mother, and I’d also given up on gaining her approval, but I loved her, and I hoped I had a chance to tell her so.
I broke a few traffic laws between my place and the hospital, only to waste endless minutes circling acres of parking lots looking for an empty space.
After finally securing a spot on the far edge of a lot, I sprinted toward the emergency entrance. Nearing the building, I met Joe Fenton, a paramedic, who was leaving, and we spoke in passing.
“Hey, Maggie. Long time no see.”
“Hi, Joe,” I said without slowing my stride.
“You can tell it’s spring break.” He smoothed his mustache, which reminded me of a caterpillar. “Just had a drunken college kid take a header off a balcony at the beach.”
“Will he make it?”
Joe shrugged. “You know head injuries. Got another call. Gotta run. Good to see ya.”
Joe swung into the driver’s seat of the ambulance parked at the curb, and I rushed up the brick walkway to the E.R. entrance. The hospital doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and I hurried to the waiting room. I’d no sooner stepped inside than an unkempt woman in a floral patio dress and flip-flops threw herself at me. After extricating myself from her viselike embrace, I was surprised to discover that, instead of a Signal Twenty awaiting admission to the psych ward, the distraught and disheveled greeter was my sister. Her informal clothes, uncombed hair and face devoid of makeup made her appear much older than her fifty-seven years and underscored the seriousness of Mother’s condition.
“I came as soon as I got your message,” I said. “How is she?”
“She’s being evaluated now.”
“What happened?” I led Caroline to a corner of the waiting room less populated than the others and sat on a vinyl-covered sofa beside her.
My usually cool-as-a-cucumber sister wrung her hands. “A little before eight, Estelle went up the bedroom to tell Mother her dinner was ready.”
I nodded. A stickler for propriety, Mother always dressed for dinner and ate in the dining room, even when she dined alone.
“Mother was slumped in her chair, incoherent, unable to move her right arm or leg. Estelle called the paramedics, then me. I got here just as they were bringing Mother in.”
I glanced around the motley assortment of humanity that crowded the waiting room. An elderly couple held hands and watched CNN on the ceiling-mounted television. A young mother and father attempted to comfort a red-faced baby who was crying at the top of his lungs, and two teenage girls took turns talking and giggling on the courtesy phone in the corner opposite us. A man in work clothes sat stoically and cradled his arm, as if it was broken.
“Where’s Hunt?” I asked.
Caroline seldom went anywhere without her wealthy, socially connected husband, Huntington Yarborough, mother’s ideal, obsequious-to-a-fault son-in-law.
“Hunt’s in Palm Beach at a securities seminar. I talked with him right after I called you. He’s taking the first plane home.”
Recent events, mainly Hunt’s help in my last murder investigation and his and Caroline’s support after Mother disowned me, had me reassessing my relationship with my sister and her husband. We weren’t at the warm-and-fuzzy stage yet, but I no longer ground my teeth in their presence.
“Have you talked to a doctor?”
Caroline shook her head. “There’s been no time.”
“I haven’t seen much of Mother lately.” That was the understatement of the century. I hadn’t seen her at all since she’d laid into me after Thanksgiving for arresting Samantha Lovelace for her husband’s murder. “Has she been feeling all right?”
“You know how Mother is. She doesn’t talk about illness, as if it’s a social taboo. Funny, don’t you think, for somebody who was married to a doctor for so many years?”
I nodded. Mother had a long list of social taboos, most of which I’d broken at one time or another.
A nurse at the admitting desk called Caroline’s name, and my sister hurried to the counter. While she filled in forms attached to a clipboard, I considered calling Bill on his cell phone, but decided to wait until we’d heard from the doctor. Mother’s episode could have been a transient ischemic attack—one wasn’t a cardiologist’s daughter without picking up some of the lingo—or something much more serious. I’d wait until I knew the diagnosis before bothering Bill.
After what seemed hours but was only about twenty minutes, a young female doctor in pale blue scrubs came out of the emergency room and spoke to the nurse at the reception desk. The nurse pointed her toward Caroline, and I hurried over to hear what the doctor was saying.
“Margaret, this is Dr. Quessenberry,” Caroline said. “She’s treating Mother.”
Dr. Quessenberry smiled and looked about fourteen. Irrationally, I wished for Dr. Fellows. Seton Fellows, my father’s best friend, had been an eminent neurologist in his day, but I comforted myself with the probability that this girl was more up-to-date on the latest treatments than a man who’d been retired for a decade.
“How is she?” I asked.
“We’ve done a CT scan that shows your mother has suffered an ischemic stroke. We’re moving her to ICU and administering antithrombotics to dissolve the clot.”
“Can we see her?” Caroline asked.
“Just for a moment, after she’s settled,” the doctor said, “but you mustn’t upset her. She needs calm and rest.”
Don’t upset her. That left me out. I didn’t want to precipitate another stroke or aggravate this one.
“You go, Caroline,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”
I returned to the chair in the corner of the waiting room, and Caroline followed the doctor into the E.R. CNN was broadcasting a hot pursuit on a California freeway. The driver was taunting police by sticking his bare behind out the window. Wondering how he maintained control of the vehicle with his fanny in the breeze, I watched to see if he had a passenger who was handling the steering while the driver mooned the cameras.
“Hello, Margaret.”
I glanced up to find Seton Fellows smiling down at me from his extraordinary height of six foot five, as if my thoughts had conjured him from thin air.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
The retired neurologist folded his lanky body into the chair beside me and took my hand. “Estelle called and told me what happened. I came to check on Priscilla.”
“Have you spoken with Dr. Quessenberry?”
He nodded. “And Dr. Katz will be taking over in ICU. He’s good. I trained him myself.”
“Is Mother going to be all right?”
“It takes about ten days before we know for certain that a stroke patient is stable. But the swiftness with which Estelle called for help definitely is a positive factor in your mother’s prognosis.”
“I’d like to see her, but Dr. Quessenberry says she shouldn’t be upset.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Why would you upset her?”
I was horrified to find my eyes filling with tears. Decades ago at the police academy, I’d learned never to let ’em see you cry. Tears don’t help, and, if nothing else, they rust your gun. I sniffed loudly and took a deep breath to forestall a sob. “She doesn’t approve of me. Never has.”
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