Holidays Are Murder
Charlotte Douglas
THE HOLIDAYS?–DON'T YOU JUST LOVE 'EM?Been overstressed at work? Ever wish the holidays would go on an extended vacation? Worried about finding the perfect gift? Or had unresolved conflicts with family that drive you up the wall?Detective Maggie Skerritt is every woman who's been there, done that.She also excels at her work, doesn't eat right or get enough sleep and loves to have someone else do her cooking. But her job is murder and she strives to make her city safe. In the process, she gathers her courage to risk loving again.But first she has to make it through Thanksgiving, Christmas…and another murder in Pelican Bay.
“You’re not really into this, are you?”
I sighed. Bill knew me too well. “I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas, not even as a kid.”
“That’s hard to believe. What kid doesn’t like Christmas?”
“My mother always hijacked the holiday.”
“Your family didn’t celebrate?”
“We celebrated all right, in my family’s own inimitable way.”
Bill pulled me toward him and tipped my chin with his finger until our eyes met. “You don’t have to do this—” he nodded toward the box with my Mrs. Claus costume “—if you don’t want to.”
I hesitated. Part of me wanted to take the out he’d given me and run.
“You’ve been telling me I need to lighten up and have some fun. So I’ll give it my best shot,” I said, determined to enjoy myself.
Even if it killed me.
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.
Holidays are Murder
Charlotte Douglas
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader,
Christmas in west central Florida isn’t exactly a Currier and Ives event. We still celebrate with family and friends, but we make our snow angels in white sugar sand instead of the frozen white stuff. Poinsettias grow in the landscape as well as sprouting in pots in the produce aisle and at the florist’s. And we’ve been known to crank up the air-conditioning in order to roast our chestnuts on an open fire. Floridians, as Bill Malcolm will show you, adapt creatively to Yuletide celebrations in the land of palm trees, sunshine and surf.
Like many of us, Maggie Skerritt has a lot on her plate for the holidays. I hope you’ll enjoy her at her best—and worst—in Holidays Are Murder, and that you’ll return to Pelican Bay in March 2006 for Spring Break, when Maggie matches wits with murderers again.
Happy reading, and happy holidays!
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 1
The phone rang at 12:30 a.m., awakening me from a deep sleep.
“Give me a break, Darcy,” I complained to the night dispatcher who’d called. “I’m still on vacation.”
“Sorry, Maggie. According to the chief, you’re back on the clock as of midnight.”
George Shelton, Pelican Bay’s chief of police and certifiable closet redneck, had been the bane of my existence for the past fifteen years, so his attitude didn’t surprise me. I scribbled the address Darcy gave me and hurried to dress.
Ten minutes later, with a bad case of bedhead and my body screaming for caffeine, I drove east along Main Street, deserted except for the crowded parking lot at the Blue Jay Sports Bar.
Pelican Bay, a picture-postcard retirement town and tourist mecca on Florida’s central west coast, is populated primarily by retirees and snowbirds from the northern States and Canada, and few are night owls. Once the sun sets and television enters prime time, you might as well roll up the sidewalks, because no one ventures out—aside from a few of the younger folks and the occasional criminals.
The criminals are where I come in. I’ve been a cop for over twenty-two years and a detective with the Pelican Bay Police Department for the past fifteen, and being hauled out of bed after midnight was making early retirement seem more alluring by the minute.
The address Darcy had given me turned out to be a pizza place in a strip mall a few miles west of U.S. Highway 19, the main artery that bisected the county from Tarpon Springs at the north to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge at the mouth of Tampa Bay. All of the strip stores were dark except the center one, Mama Mia’s Pizzeria. Lights blazed from the large plate-glass windows and illuminated a scattering of bistro tables and chairs in what was primarily a take-out joint.
I parked my twelve-year-old Volvo in a diagonal parking space between a Pelican Bay Police Department cruiser and the sheriff’s crime scene unit van, clipped my shield to the pocket of my blazer and climbed out.
A crescent moon hung high in the east and palm fronds rustled above the parking median’s lush floral landscaping, but a chill wind, compliments of a late November cold front, dispersed any semitropical illusions. I hurried into the pizzeria, as much to escape the cold as from any burning desire to fight crime.
Dave Adler, who’d been assigned as my partner at the beginning of the weight-loss clinic murders six weeks ago, met me at the door. Looking rested, bright-eyed and young enough to be my son, he greeted me with a grin. “How was your vacation, Detective Skerritt?”
At least I’d finally broken him of the habit of calling me “ma’am.”
“Terrific,” I lied.
During the past two weeks I’d spent several pleasant hours on the beaches of Caladesi Island and the deck of a cabin cruiser owned by Bill Malcolm, my former partner when I first became a cop with the Tampa P.D. twenty-two years ago. But for the remainder of my vacation, I’d been bored out of my gourd. Accustomed to working 24/7 in our understaffed CID—Criminal Investigation Department—for a decade and a half, I’d forgotten how to relax and enjoy myself. Without new or cold cases to occupy my mind, I had wandered my waterfront condo, restless and unable to concentrate, even on the popular novels I was so fond of.
“New hairdo?” Adler asked.
I resisted the urge to wipe the teasing grin off his too young, too handsome face. “What have we got?”
“Armed robbery.”
“Anyone hurt?”
Adler shook his head. “The owner’s shook up. She was the only one here.”
“Mama Mia?”
He nodded, then jerked his head toward a door behind him. “She’s back there.”
I crossed the room, heavy with the smell of onions and Italian spices, rounded the take-out counter and entered the office at the back.
Steve Johnson, the patrolman who had responded to the 911 call, stood beside a woman who huddled in a desk chair and was trying to light a cigarette with trembling fingers. Johnson, big and beefy with a paunch that didn’t need supplementing, stuffed the last of a slice of cold pizza into his mouth. “Hey, Maggie. Thith ith Maria Ridoletthi, th’owner.”
“Maria Ridoletti?” I clarified. Johnson’s full mouth had made me guess at the correct pronunciation.
Johnson swallowed hard. “Yeah. I’ll be out front if you need me.”
“Keep your hands in your pockets and your mouth closed. For all I know, you just consumed evidence.” I smiled to take the bite out of my criticism. Johnson wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but his heart was in the right place. However, with the department under siege by a city council lobbying to shut us down and save taxpayer money by contracting with the county sheriff to take over policing Pelican Bay, we couldn’t afford any screw-ups.
His pudgy face flushed with embarrassment, Johnson slid past me to the door and left me alone with Mama Mia.
“You want to tell me what happened?” I asked.
Maria Ridoletti was far from my image of an Italian mother. Midthirties, rake thin with stringy dark hair, narrow face and a body that looked as if she’d never eaten pizza or much of anything else, she stared up at me with dazed, black-lined eyes. “I was robbed.”
“By a customer?”
She shook her head. “I’d already closed and locked up for the night. I was just beginning to count the day’s receipts for the night deposit when I looked up and found him standing right where you are now. When he saw me, he jumped, like he hadn’t expected anyone to be here.”
“Was he someone you recognized?”
Maria nodded.
I dug deep for patience and asked, “Who was he?”
“Bill Clinton.”
“Who?” Somewhere in my sleep-deprived brain, Bill Clinton’s appearance at a pizza parlor made perfect sense. Especially since Mickey D’s had closed for the night.
“You know,” Maria said. “Bill Clinton, the former president.”
I was about to call the CSU tech to bag what she was smoking when she explained.
“It was a mask, like on Halloween.”
“A big man?”
She shook her head. “A runt, no bigger than me. But he kept one hand in his pocket and acted like he had a gun. So I didn’t argue when he ordered me to hand over the cash.”
“You’re sure it was a man?”
She closed her eyes a moment, as if trying to remember, then nodded. “Yeah. No boobs, no butt. Scrawny neck with a big Adam’s apple.”
“Deep voice?”
“No, sort of squeaky.”
“As if he was trying to disguise it?”
Maria shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Did you see any identifying marks? Scars? Tattoos?”
“Except for his neck, he was pretty much covered up. Even wore gloves.”
“What else was he wearing?”
“Jeans. A Buccaneer ball cap and sweatshirt. Black Nikes.”
I couldn’t help sighing. She’d just described the wardrobe of choice of almost half the men in the Tampa Bay area. “You said you locked the front door. Was the back locked, too?”
She nodded. “I always double check the doors before I count the money.”
“So how did Mr. Clinton get in? You have any employees with keys?”
“No way. I can’t pay much, so the turnover here’s pretty high. Don’t have anyone I’d trust with keys.” She took a long pull on her cigarette and exhaled.
I waved away the smoke. “Security system?”
She grimaced. “Never thought I needed one till now.”
“How much did Clinton steal?”
“I hadn’t finished counting. Most of our business is credit cards, but we sell a lot of pizza during Sunday football games. Had to be somewhere between six hundred and a thousand dollars.” Her black-lined eyes misted with tears. “Times are tight, Detective. Will I get it back?”
Probably not. “We’ll do our best.”
“Detective Skerritt.” Adler stood in the doorway. “Come look at this.”
“You okay?” I asked Maria.
She swiped at her eyes with the back of one hand, smearing her eyeliner, then nodded and took another drag. I didn’t have the heart to remind her about the state law that banned smoking in restaurants.
“Sit tight. I’ll be right back.” I left the room and followed Adler down a hallway that branched to the kitchen on the right, restrooms on the left. He shone his Maglite at the ceiling. Where the grate for the air-conditioning duct should have been was a gaping hole.
I groaned. “We’ve got ourselves a rooftop burglar.”
I continued down the hall, pushed the panic bar on the rear exit and stepped outside. A gust of wind blew a tattered newspaper across the rear parking lot, empty except for a car I later learned was Ridoletti’s. A dog barked in the distance. In the harsh glow of security lights, I scanned the back of the building. A Dumpster stood along the rear wall with a wooden pallet leaning against it. Another pallet atop the Dumpster rested against the wall like a ladder.
“There’s your access,” I said. “Make sure the techs process this area.”
Fresh skid marks from a single narrow tire indicated the perp might have made his getaway by bike. Or it could have been a track left earlier in the day by a kid just passing through.
I nodded to the row of mobile homes in the trailer park that backed up to the strip mall. “We’ll start a canvass. Maybe the neighbors saw something.”
“Now?” Adler lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “It’s almost 2:00 a.m.”
“Most of those folks are in their late seventies and eighties,” I reminded him. “They won’t remember squat by daybreak.”
“That’s cold, Maggie.”
“We’re in a cold business, Adler.”
Eight hours and an equal number of cups of coffee later, I sat at my desk in CID and typed my report. None of the neighbors behind Mama Mia’s had seen or heard anything. Unlike the popular television crime dramas that have the culprit in custody within an hour—including commercial breaks—our crime lab techs had found zip, but not for lack of trying. To make matters worse, Maria Ridoletti was already proclaiming to all who would listen that if the sheriff’s department had been handling the case, she’d probably have her money back by now.
I finished the report and tried to ignore the foreboding in my gut. Examining the strip mall, I’d noted that Bloomberg’s Jewelers was next door to Mama Mia’s. Maria had stated that the robber had been startled to encounter her. Apparently not expecting to confront anyone, however, he’d worn a mask, even though business hours were long over. That fact suggested he’d prepared for surveillance cameras, which were prevalent in Bloomberg’s. My guess was that the thief had intended to hit the jewelry store but had become disoriented on the roof and picked the wrong air duct for entry.
If there was anything worse than a burglar, it was a stupid burglar. Maria Ridoletti was lucky he hadn’t panicked and shot her. I figured the only reason he hadn’t was that he hadn’t actually had a gun.
This time.
“Skerritt! Get in here!” Chief Shelton’s voice reverberated through the building from his office at the other end of the hall. Whenever his temper escalated, he abandoned the intercom for a more direct and intimidating form of communication.
Hoping to respond before his infamous temper boiled over, I hurried to his office. Kyle Dayton flashed me a sympathetic glance as I passed his post at the dispatch desk.
“Close the door,” Shelton snapped when I entered his pine-paneled inner sanctum.
I shut the door behind me and waited for the chief to speak. For several weeks after the city council had first broached disbanding the police department, Shelton had discarded his fireball personality and slunk around the P.D. like a whipped dog. But somehow he’d regained his pugnacious attitude, the fiery spirit that had seen him through the Vietnam War and his early KKK days in the Georgia foothills and had ultimately made him a contender in the political arena. Politics was the only reason he held his $180,000 a year position, because Shelton had the policing and personnel skills of a gnat.
“You got a lead on this rooftop burglar?” Midmorning sunlight glinted off his bald head and his pale blue eyes squinted in the glare from the window that overlooked the city park.
“Not yet. No physical evidence was recovered at the scene, and the perp was masked.”
“Dammit, Skerritt, first a serial murderer and now this. How the hell do you expect us to keep our department—”
“Crime happens, Chief. That’s why we’re here.”
Shelton’s face reddened and a vein bulged at his temple. “We’re here to keep crime from happening, and if we don’t, we sure as hell won’t be here much longer. There’ll be sheriff’s cruisers patrolling these streets instead of our green-and-whites!”
“You want me to consult a psychic?” I already knew the answer, but Shelton’s dumbfounded expression was worth asking the question.
“Hell, no. Just solve the damn case.”
“With no suspects, no leads, no hard evidence, that’s a problem. I could put the word out to our usual informants, offer to pay for info in case the perp blabs to his cronies or flashes his take around town.”
Shelton shook his head with a guttural growl. “Whatever you do, keep expenses down. Money’s the whole issue behind the council’s push to can us.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I turned to leave.
“And, Skerritt,” he added.
“Yes?”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
I knew he’d say that. Luck, after all, was free.
After fruitless hours of scanning mug shots and vital statistics in search of a runt who could fit through air ducts, I shut down my ancient computer and called it a day at 7:00 p.m.
Bill Malcolm met me at the Dock of the Bay, a restaurant and bar that overlooked the marina where Bill’s thirty-eight-foot cabin cruiser, the Ten-Ninety-Eight was moored. Bill, who had lived on board since his retirement from the Tampa P.D. two years ago, had offered to cook supper for me in his galley kitchen, but I’d turned him down. Our relationship had taken an unexpected turn during my vacation. For years he had been joking about my marrying him, but now I wasn’t so sure he was joking any longer, and I was uncertain how I felt about that change. I loved him, without question. One other fact of which I was completely certain, however, was that I wasn’t a good candidate for marriage. In reality, no cop was, hence the skyrocketing divorce rate for police officers.
Years ago Bill’s wife, spooked by fear of his dying in the line of duty, had divorced him and moved to Seattle with their only daughter, Melanie. Bill had been heartbroken. I’d stepped in to help with his daughter on her infrequent visits, and my relationship with Bill had deepened, then stalled in limbo when I’d put on the brakes. I still wasn’t sure what had stopped me, fear of commitment or an equal anxiety over the true depth of Bill’s feelings for me.
One thing was undeniable. Bill had been my best friend since our first days on patrol for the Tampa P.D. twenty-two years ago, and I didn’t want anything to spoil that friendship. Tonight, although he’d been retired from the job for two years, I looked forward to hearing his take on my rooftop burglar.
I slid into a booth across from Bill. Toby Keith belted out “How Do You Like Me Now?” from the ancient Wurlitzer in the corner, and locals from the marina filled the stools at the bar and watched a pregame football show on the new plasma-screen television high on the wall in the corner.
Bill greeted me with a grin. His thick hair, once brown, was now white, a handsome contrast to his deep tan, and his blue eyes retained their boyish charm. “I already ordered.”
“No problem.” I always had an old-fashioned burger all the way with fries, and Bill was well versed in my preferences.
The waitress served frosted mugs of cold beer and when she left, Bill said, “For someone who just came off vacation, you look tired.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“You also look beautiful,” he hastened to add, “but I’m worried about you. You wore yourself out on the weight-loss clinic murders. I was hoping with those solved, you might slow down a bit.”
“No rest for the weary.” I sipped my beer and hoped it wouldn’t send me into a deep coma.
While we waited for our food, I gave Bill the details on our rooftop burglar. “Looks like I’ve hit a wall,” I said when I’d finished.
“Have you tried tracking the Clinton mask?”
“Adler worked on it all day. But the masks were produced over a decade ago and carried by the thousands by Wal-Mart and K-Mart, as well as other specialty stores. Nobody kept records on individual purchases of the masks. Besides, you know how many transients and new residents we have in this county. That mask could have been brought in from anywhere in the country.”
“What about online?”
“I’ll make sure Adler checked that, too.” I hated computers, didn’t own one and barely tolerated using the one at work. In a profession becoming increasingly high tech, my technophobia was another compelling reason to toss in the towel. I refused to own a cell phone and only reluctantly carried a beeper.
Our meals arrived and as I bit into my burger with gusto, I realized I’d forgotten to eat lunch. Good thing, since the food in front of me represented an entire day’s ration. Fresh memories of three overweight murder victims had me counting calories.
Bill put down his burger and wiped his lips with his napkin. “Margaret—”
Besides Bill, only members of my immediate family called me Margaret. When I’d first partnered with him, he’d called me Princess Margaret, a derogatory reference to my debutante days, but after I saved his life during a domestic dispute call, I’d won his respect and he’d referred to me as Skerritt on the job. Later, after his divorce, when our relationship developed outside of work, he’d begun calling me Margaret, often with a tenderness I found hard to resist.
“Margaret, I’ve given this a lot of thought.” His blue eyes locked gazes with mine and his expression was deadly serious.
My heartbeat stuttered. Had my unwavering rejections of his marriage proposals convinced him to move on?
“I’ve decided,” he continued, “to accept your invitation to have Thanksgiving at your mother’s.”
“That wasn’t an invitation,” I said, relieved only until the prospect of Bill and my mother in the same room hit me. “That was a threat.”
“She can’t be that bad.”
“She doesn’t approve of anything about me,” I countered. “And she lets me know it every time our paths cross.”
My mother was a social scion of Pelican Bay. Her father had been a prominent physician, my late father a distinguished cardiologist, and she enjoyed her position of wealth and influence. When I had graduated from college with a degree in library science and announced my engagement to Greg Singleford, who was completing his internship in the ER, Mother had been over the moon. But Greg’s brutal murder by a crack addict in an ER treatment room had changed everything.
I’d loved Greg with all the passion and innocence of youth, and his death had shaken my core values. As a result, I couldn’t see spending my life with books, or, as my mother had intended, at meetings of the Junior League and Art Guild, once I’d realized that the world was such a dangerous place. Daddy had supported my decision to enter the police academy and had openly expressed his pride in my accomplishments. He’d served as a buffer between Mother and me until his death twelve years ago. But Mother had been horrified from the beginning that her younger daughter had chosen a down-and-dirty career in law enforcement over social prestige. And she never let me forget it. During the recent publicity over my arrest of Lester Morelli for the clinic murders, she’d taken to her bed with a sick headache and had remained there until after Morelli had been indicted and the news coverage had ceased.
“So you’re withdrawing the invitation?” Bill asked.
“No, I’m just warning you that dinner with Mother will be an ordeal. It always is. So you might want to reconsider.”
He reached across the table and grasped my hand. “Maybe just once you ought to tell your mother to take her hoity-toity attitude and stick it up her—”
“Bill!”
“You’ve heard the word ass before,” he said with a rare flash of temper. “You’ve even used it a few times yourself.”
“But never in relation to my mother. Mother wouldn’t be caught dead with a common ass. She has only a very sophisticated derriere.” I teased to defuse his irritation.
“You’ve got to stop tiptoeing around her.”
“She and Caroline are all the family I have.”
Pain flashed through his eyes, and I wished I could take back my words. Bill had even less family than I did.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Maybe it’s time for a family of your own. We could be a family, you and I.”
I was on the verge of choking up over his proposal when my beeper sounded. “I have to call the station.”
“I’m giving you a cell phone for Christmas,” he promised with a scowl.
“I’d either lose it or forget to charge it, so save your money.” I hurried from the table to the pay phone in the lobby.
I was gone only a couple of minutes before I returned and cast a longing look at my unfinished burger. “Gotta go,” I said. “Another break-in.”
“You’re dead on your feet,” Bill said. “At least let me drive.”
For a few seconds I luxuriated in the unaccustomed comfort of having someone fuss over me. Then duty kicked in.
“Okay, but let’s roll. Shelton was already frothing at the mouth over last night’s burglary. I don’t want him putting me on report for slow response.”
CHAPTER 2
Last night’s burglar may have been stupid, but if he was hoping to make the Pelican Bay Police Department look bad, tonight’s repeat break-in had definitely accomplished that goal. Bill parked his car in the same space I’d used the night before. I thanked him for the ride and left the car in a hurry. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed that our discussion about families had been interrupted. Relieved, I decided. Being with Bill when he was relaxed and laid-back was easy. When the serious stuff kicked in, I was out of my element.
It was just after 8:00 p.m., and light poured from the windows of Mama Mia’s, doing a booming take-out business, judging by the activity visible through the plate glass and the number of drivers scurrying from the restaurant with insulated bags. Monday night football apparently created a huge appetite for pizza.
My attention this evening, however, wasn’t on Mama Mia’s but Bloomberg’s Jewelers next door. Steve Johnson let me in the front entrance.
“The owner’s on his way,” Johnson said. “It was a smash-and-grab.”
Shards of glass from several display cases littered the narrow aisle. Bloomberg’s wasn’t a large store, but its small space packed a hefty inventory of high-end goods. Even my very picky mother was a frequent shopper here. Looking at the empty display cases, I hoped Bloomberg’s insurance was adequate. The man had lost a mint.
“We have to quit meeting like this, Maggie.” Adler appeared at my elbow and handed me a large foam cup of coffee. “Malcolm sent you this. Got it at Mama Mia’s.”
I took the steaming infusion of caffeine with gratitude and glanced toward the parking lot where Bill had returned to his car and was now reading a magazine in the glow of the dome light. It was going to be another long night.
Bloomberg arrived immediately after Adler. He entered the shop and, for a moment, I feared the little man would burst into tears.
“I’m Detective Skerritt,” I said. “We spoke on the phone this morning.”
A frail, nondescript man with kind brown eyes and graying hair, Bloomberg wrung his hands. “You warned me, Detective. And I called the contractor. He’s scheduled tomorrow morning to secure the ducts on the roof. Too late now.”
Bloomberg seemed to shrink into his shapeless gray sweater as he shook his head and surveyed the damage. Adler moved toward the rear of the shop and entered a hallway.
“Can you tell me what’s missing?” I asked Bloomberg.
“Someone knew what he was doing,” the jeweler said. “He took only the most expensive items.”
“Didn’t have much time, though,” Johnson chimed in. “I was in the neighborhood and was here within minutes of the alarm sounding.”
Adler returned to the front room. “Entered through the roof, just like last night.”
“Do you have motion detectors?” I asked Bloomberg.
The elderly man shook his head. “Only alarms on the doors and display windows.”
“Were the interior lights on when you arrived?” I asked Johnson.
He shook his head. “I hit the lights when I got here so I could see to turn off the alarm.”
“Then our burglar couldn’t be seen from the street,” I said, “and he didn’t set off the alarm until he left. He had all the time in the world to pick and choose what he wanted.”
The CSU techs arrived. “Dåj? vu all over again,” one commented before starting to work.
“I’ll need your surveillance tapes,” I told Bloomberg.
“From how far back?” he asked.
“How far back do you keep them?”
He looked chagrined. “My wife makes fun of me. Says I’m obsessive/compulsive. It takes a lot of tapes, but I keep them for a month. Just in case.”
“In case?”
His lined cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “I’m an old man. Sometimes I don’t notice things like I should. If something was missing, like from a shop-lifter, it could be days before I’d notice.” His eyes brightened. “But if I have the tapes, I can at least go back and see what happened.”
“Let me have them all.”
I’d begin with the past few hours. I was hopeful surveillance would reveal a good view of our burglar. Even if masked, if he was a habitual offender, I might recognize him. If not, I’d work my way backward through the remaining videos. If someone had cased the store in the past month, he probably wouldn’t have bothered to hide his face and I’d have him on tape.
Several hours later I wasn’t feeling as confident. I’d returned to the station to view the most recent surveillance video. Even in the dim light from the streetlights outside, it had captured perfect images of the burglar, who had ditched Bill Clinton for a ski mask. After the pizzeria closed, Maria Ridoletti stopped by the station to confirm our perp. Standing in front of the monitor, she watched the tape and shook her head.
“That’s not him.”
“You mean, it’s not Clinton?” I suspected that the ski mask had thrown her.
She crossed her arms over her skinny chest and tapped her foot impatiently. “It’s a different guy altogether. He’s almost a foot taller than the one who robbed me.”
Those were words I didn’t want to hear. “You’re sure? After all, you were sitting down.”
“And the guy in the Clinton mask was almost eye-to-eye with me. Nope, that’s definitely not the one who robbed me.” Her scathing look spoke volumes. “Looks like you’ve got two robbers to catch now.”
The next morning the insistent ringing of the telephone awakened me. A glance at my bedside clock indicated the time was a few minutes past seven. I’d had less than four hours’ sleep in the past two days, and I wanted nothing more than to let the answering machine pick up while I dived under the covers until the alarm sounded at seven-thirty. But, recalling the dynamic duo of thieves still at large, I fumbled for the phone beside my bed and braced to hear Darcy announcing another break-in.
“Good morning, dear.” My mother’s refined voice, buoyant with irritating cheerfulness, resonated in my ear. “I was hoping I’d find you at home.”
That one simple statement carried a truckload of disapproval, her indirect snipe at the unpredictable hours of my job.
“What’s up?” I asked. Mother never called simply to chat or pass the time of day. She communicated only to issue a summons or an edict. This morning was no exception.
“I’m calling about Thanksgiving dinner. You are coming, aren’t you?”
“I certainly intend to.” I didn’t want to get into the possibility, of which Mother was well aware but chose to ignore, that work might intervene.
“We’ll gather at five for cocktails. Dinner at six.”
With partial consciousness came the memory of my conversation with Bill at the restaurant the previous night. “If it’s all right, I’d like to bring a guest.”
“A guest?” Her voice crackled with surprise.
“Bill Malcolm.”
“Oh.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Of course not.” Her tone contradicted her words. “But, really, Margaret, what do you know about this man?”
“This man was my partner for seven years and he’s been my friend for over twenty.” The fact that in all that time he’d never met my family said a lot about my shaky relationship with them.
“I’m aware of that, dear,” she said with a hint of exasperation, “but what do you know about him?”
“I know that he’s good and decent, but if you’d rather I came alone—”
“I’m sure Mr. Malcolm is a very nice man, but what do you know about his family?” For Mother, with people, as with art and antiques, provenance was all.
“Most of them are dead,” I said.
“Don’t be obtuse, Margaret. You know exactly what I’m asking. Who were they?”
Decent, unpretentious, hardworking people, with whom my elitist mother had absolutely nothing in common. “His father was a citrus grower in Plant City. He’s eighty-five, suffers from Alzheimer’s, and is in an assisted-living facility in Tampa.”
“He was a farmer?”
“You could say that.” Contrariness kept me silent on the fact that Bill’s father’s orange groves were several thousand acres of prime real estate, worth millions if sold for development. A sufficient amount of wealth covered a multitude of sins in Mother’s book, but I wasn’t about to pander to her prejudices.
“And his son lives in Pelican Bay?” She was sounding more dubious by the minute.
“At the marina. On his boat.”
“Mr. Malcolm lives on a boat?” Horror laced her voice. “Like a transient?”
Even in my sleep-deprived state, I experienced a guilty thrill at Mother’s disapproval. I’d learned long ago I could never please her, so sometimes I took perverse pleasure in pushing her buttons instead. Especially since I was still smarting from her dismissive attitude a few weeks ago at the yacht club when I’d saved her from an armed teenager intent on robbery. Instead of thanking me, she’d criticized my language. Why I, at forty-eight, still longed for my mother’s approval, was one of the mysteries of the universe.
“Because he does live on a boat, I’m sure he’d enjoy having Thanksgiving dinner in a real home,” I lied, knowing Bill could whip up an elegant holiday meal in his small galley kitchen that would put Mother’s expensive caterers to shame.
“Your friends are always welcome at my house, Margaret,” Mother insisted, but her tone lacked conviction. “I’ll be happy to have Mr. Malcolm join us for Thanksgiving. But please, remind him that we dress for dinner.”
I stifled the irrational image of Mother, my perfect older sister Caroline and her stuffy husband, Hunt, sitting naked around Mother’s antique dining table, and I couldn’t resist baiting her. “Clothes are always helpful, especially when the weather’s chilly.”
Mother’s sigh of exasperation vibrated loudly through the handset. “You know what I mean, Margaret. At least, I hope you haven’t forgotten all the social niceties.”
Not as long as I had Mother as a constant reminder. “Thanks, Mother. I’ll see you Thursday.”
I climbed out of bed and gazed through the sliding-glass doors of my second-floor bedroom at St. Joseph Sound and the Intracoastal Waterway that separated the city from Pelican Beach. The waters, smooth as glass, reflected a towering bank of cumulus clouds, rose-tipped by the sunrise, and mirrored the shimmering lavender-and-pink striations cast by the early-morning sky.
For a moment I considered what life might be like without my job. With the tidy sum vested in my pension and a small income from the trust Daddy had left me, I wouldn’t have to work. If I retired, I could enjoy a cup of coffee and the morning paper on my balcony while I watched the charter boats heading into the Gulf with their boatloads of tourists.
And then what would I do the rest of the day?
With a month’s worth of Bloomberg’s surveillance video waiting at the station, I headed for the shower.
Adler was already at the station when I arrived.
“Did you go home last night?” I asked.
Adler had a pretty young wife, Sharon, and an adorable year-old daughter, Jessica, and I worried that the extra hours he logged were negatively affecting his family. I didn’t want him to end up as Bill had, divorced and unable to watch his daughter growing up.
“Yeah, I left right after you.” Adler flushed to the tips of his ears. “I’m logging some personal time today. Came in early to let you know before I take off.”
He was having trouble looking me in the eye. I shut the door to the CID cubicle that some called an office and faced him. “What’s up?”
He lowered his voice. “An interview with the Clearwater P.D. I can’t wait for the council to make up its mind about whether to keep our department. For my family’s sake, I have to make sure I have a job.”
Although he was still green, I respected Adler more than any of my partners since Bill Malcolm. With his sharp mind and humble demeanor, he had the makings of a great detective. He also had the rare gift of bringing out my maternal instincts, and I would sorely miss him if he left.
I spent the rest of the day watching surveillance tapes until my eyes crossed. During the past few weeks, several people had done some serious browsing in Bloomberg’s without making any purchases, but no one fit the description of either of the perps. In desperation, I punched the number of Mick Rafferty, head of the sheriff’s crime lab, into my phone.
“Mick,” I said when he answered. “Do you have the latest face recognition software?”
“You know I do, Maggie, me darlin’.” Mick was quintessential Boston Irish, young and cocky with devilish blue eyes, wall-to-wall freckles and an encyclopedic mind like a steel trap. “Haven’t you seen the ACLU goon squad screaming invasion of privacy for the past few months on the evening news?”
I wasn’t about to admit how long it had been since I’d watched a newscast, evening or otherwise. “Does the software work?”
“What have you got?”
I explained about the surveillance tapes and my hope that Mick could run a few of the faces through the system in hopes of coming up with a match.
“Make notes of the footage you want me to check and send me the videos,” he said. “But I have to warn you, I have three major homicide cases that have priority. It could be a while before I can get to your tapes.”
“I understand, Mick,” I said. “But I’m flying blind here, and I’m afraid this pair will hit again. Next time somebody might get hurt.”
“You’ll get the bastards, Maggie. You always do.”
I marked the tapes that showed suspicious customers, bundled the videos in a bag and carried them to my car to transport to the sheriff’s crime lab in midcounty.
Thanksgiving morning dawned warm, clear and bright, the kind of November day that had the folks down at the chamber of commerce—and tourists who’d shelled out big bucks for their holiday vacations—exchanging high fives. As I drove north along Edgewater Drive into town, joggers in colorful spandex were spaced along the bayside path like beads on a string, the brown pelicans that gave the town its name dived for fish in the emerald-green waters, and the cloudless sky promised a balmy, sunny day.
After I passed the marina, I turned into the parking lot of Sophia’s, a four-star restaurant and hotel, built like a Venetian palazzo and nestled on the edge of the bay. Antonio Stavropoulos, the ma?tre d’, had called the station earlier and requested that I stop by, and the dispatcher had relayed his message.
I had to circle the lot twice before I found a place to park. Thanksgiving breakfast at Sophia’s was a local holiday tradition, and the recent murder of the restaurant’s owner by her greedy husband had apparently not diminished the eatery’s appeal. If anything, the publicity appeared to have increased business.
Antonio met me in the lobby. The tall, elegant man, gray-haired and rake slim in his continental-cut suit, took a large cardboard box from behind the hostess desk and handed it to me.
“A gift,” he said, “for the members of your department from the staff at Sophia’s.”
Departmental regs and Shelton with apoplexy danced through my head. “I’m sorry, but we can’t accept gifts.”
“But today is Thanksgiving, and here we are grateful for the hard work the police have done to catch our Sophia’s killer and put Lester Morelli behind bars where he belongs.”
“You’re very kind,” I said, “but rules are rules.”
And Chief Shelton was poised like a stalking panther, waiting for one wrong slip so he could fire me and justify his fierce opposition to my joining the force fifteen years ago, when I’d taken him to court in a discrimination suit to win my job.
“I understand,” Antonio said with a twinkle in his eye. “Then you must purchase these pastries for your department, no?”
I stifled a groan. Pastries at Sophia’s ran about a dollar a bite, and that huge box held at least four dozen of the luscious goodies. “Sure. How much?”
“One dollar,” Antonio said with a deadpan expression. “Tax included.”
Ten minutes later, with the box of baklava and other Greek delicacies stashed in the station’s break room, I entered my office to contemplate the rooftop burglars who’d so far eluded me.
The fact that they hadn’t struck again the past two nights was no consolation. I’d asked the chief to have the media alert business owners to secure their rooftop duct systems, but Shelton was too paranoid about the political fallout to comply. The most I’d been able to accomplish was the distribution of lists of the stolen jewelry along with our incomplete description of the thieves to Bay area pawnshops. My only hope was that the perps would be dumb enough to try to move the items in the area.
Later in the morning, Adler was plowing his way through a third piece of baklava and revisiting mug shots in case we’d missed someone the first time around. He’d offered no details on his earlier job interview, and I hadn’t asked. I figured he’d talk about it when he was ready.
“How come there are so few skinny criminals?” he asked as he flipped through the pages of photographs. “All these guys are big and muscle-bound.”
I shrugged. “They’ve all been through the system. Guess they bulked up by working out in prison. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
My mind didn’t want to grasp the possibility that had been flitting around the edges of my consciousness since Maria Ridoletti’s description of the first perp.
“Unless our thieves are children.”
CHAPTER 3
I dressed for the holiday dinner at Mother’s with my usual fatalism. No matter how well-made or perfectly fitted my gray slacks, burgundy silk blouse and ubiquitous black blazer, Mother and Caroline, who were on a first-name basis with every salesclerk in Neiman Marcus at Tampa’s International Plaza, would consider me a frump.
But focusing on couture was merely a diversion from the anger over the break-ins that simmered deep inside, a fire I had to douse or I’d end up being the turkey at our Thanksgiving meal. Interacting with my family without creating a domestic crisis took the combined skills of a global diplomat and a SWAT hostage negotiator. In my present state of mind, I’d send my mother into cardiac arrest and my sister into a swoon before the night ended.
Bill Malcolm, who, like Sean Connery, grew more handsome with age, arrived at four-thirty, looking like a cover model for Yachting World in gray slacks, navy blazer and a white turtleneck that showcased his George Hamilton tan. Homing in on my disposition like a heat-seeking missile, he saw immediately beneath my calm facade.
“If this dinner has you so worked up, don’t go,” he stated with his usual and often irritating logic.
“It’s not that.”
“The job?”
I nodded. “You’d think after two decades I’d grow a thicker skin.”
“Uh-uh.” He took my hand, led me to the sofa and pulled me down beside him. “If these crimes stop affecting you, then you’ve lost your humanity. I never want to see that happen.”
“I can deal with most of it, but when kids are involved…”
Images that had dogged my days and haunted my dreams for over sixteen years made me shudder. Small, white, bloated bodies on the medical examiner’s table, young girls, children really, pulled from Tampa Bay, where they’d been dumped like garbage by their assailants. Try as we might, Bill and I had been unable to track down the monster who had killed them. The murders had stopped, but whether because we’d turned up the heat or the killer had simply moved on, I’d probably never know.
“New case?” Bill asked.
“Not exactly. It just struck me today that our rooftop burglars might be kids.”
Bill nodded. “And a kid didn’t have the knowledge to pull off that jewelry store heist, not unless someone coached him.”
“What kind of person uses kids to do his dirty work?” Dickens’ Oliver Twist and Fagin came instantly to mind. I knew that degree in library science was good for something.
“You sure they’re kids?” Bill asked.
“I don’t have hard evidence, only what my gut’s telling me.”
He pulled me toward him and kissed my forehead. “Ah, Margaret, that’s only one of the things I love about you.”
“My gut?”
“That, too, but mainly because after over twenty years on the job, you’re still capable of outrage.”
I glanced at the clock. “Speaking of outrage, if we don’t get moving, that’s what Mother’s going to display if we’re late.”
The home of my youth was located in Pelican Bay’s most exclusive section, Belle Terre, a waterfront enclave of mansions built in the 1920s and 1930s on a bluff above the sound, most now on the National Register of Historic Buildings.
Growing up, I’d taken for granted the Mediterranean splendor of the house designed by Misner with its soaring beamed ceilings, mosaic tile floors, central courtyard and Spanish tile roof, set on two acres of prime waterfront real estate. In the lush St. Augustine lawn, brick pathways meandered through moss-draped live oaks, orange trees and jacarandas, and ended at the bayside tennis court, where I’d spent some of the happiest hours of my childhood playing tennis with my dad. Today I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held a racket.
Bill gave a low whistle of surprise as he guided his car along the winding drive to the front of the house. “These are pretty fancy digs.”
“When I was living here, I never thought of this place as extraordinary. My friends lived in similar houses, so this was no big deal.”
He brought the car to a halt next to my brother-in-law Hunt’s Lincoln Town Car. “You miss your debutante days?”
I thought for a moment, as much to postpone going inside as to consider his question. “I miss the innocence. In spite of so many advantages, I led a very sheltered life. My friends didn’t do drugs or have drunken parties. And there was no premarital sex.” I flashed him a smile. “We were snobs, but we were virtuous snobs.”
“You’re still virtuous.” His answering smile was warm and intimate.
“You know better.” My wild and hot affair with a fellow cop my first year on the Tampa P.D. had been no secret. I’d hoped the physical intimacy would dull my emotional pain, but I’d soon discovered that hard work was a better analgesic than sex and had quickly ended the involvement.
“Our parents didn’t divorce,” I continued. “If there was scandal, it was kept so hush-hush, we never knew about it. And even though the Vietnam War was raging and the country was mired in antiwar and civil-rights protests and riots, none of it touched me. I thought I lived in a perfect world, until…”
Bill squeezed my hand. He’d heard many times the story of Greg’s murder and how the trauma and anger over that horrific event had propelled me into a career in law enforcement.
“After all this—” Bill’s gesture took in the impressive two-story house and sprawling grounds that required a team of gardeners to maintain them “—the academy must have been a culture shock.”
I nodded. “And, in the words of Thomas Wolfe, I can’t go home again. I’ll never look at the world the same.”
“You went from one extreme to the other. Maybe it’s time to find a middle ground.”
He was talking about retirement, and the prospect held a certain seductiveness, until I remembered the possibility that some scumbag might be using kids to do his dirty work. “Not yet.”
“More dragons to slay?” He squeezed my hand again and his blue eyes lit with amusement.
“How were you able to finally give it up?” I asked.
His expression sobered. “One day I woke up and knew I’d had enough, that I didn’t want to live surrounded by crime and the misery it inflicts any longer. So I just walked away.”
“You think that’ll happen to me?”
“There’s always hope.”
I noted then the other cars beyond Hunt’s and realized we’d been the last to arrive. “Speaking of dragons, we should hurry inside before the Queen Mother starts breathing fire.”
Estelle, mother’s longtime maid, dressed in her usual black uniform and an immaculate starched apron as white as her hair, opened the massive carved front door. “Happy Thanksgiving, Miss Margaret. It’s good to see you home again.”
I hugged her and kissed her smooth ebony cheek. Her scent of Ivory soap triggered a hundred memories. Mother would have had a cow if she’d witnessed my display of affection toward the hired help, but Estelle had raised me, bandaged my scraped knees, dried my childhood tears, fed me cookies after school and, years later, held me when my father died. In many ways, she’d been more of a mother than my biological one.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Estelle. I’ve missed you. This is my friend Bill Malcolm.”
Bill shook Estelle’s hand and her bright brown eyes scanned him up and down with the scrutiny of a cattle buyer in a stockyard. “He’s a keeper, Miss Margaret.”
“Thanks, Estelle,” Bill said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her.”
“Your mamma and the rest of ’em are in the courtyard,” Estelle said. “I gots to check on them caterers before they trash my kitchen.”
She hurried toward the back of the house at a shuffling gait that indicated her bunions were bothering her, and I guided Bill through the foyer into the courtyard.
“Wow,” Bill murmured as we stepped into the soaring atrium. “Great space.”
Seeing the courtyard through his eyes made me reevaluate where I’d played as a child. A triple-tiered fountain anchored the center of the huge expanse of Mexican terra-cotta tiles. Tropical plantings of frangipani, gardenias, bird of paradise, and travelers’ palms softened the corners of the huge area. Open hallways with Moorish arches circled both the first and second floors, and an arching glass ceiling flooded the area with natural light and kept the air-conditioning in and the weather out.
Groupings of wrought-iron chairs and tables with plump cushions were scattered in conversational clusters across the open area. With unusual grace for an eighty-two-year-old, Mother rose from a nearby chair and came to greet us.
“I thought perhaps you weren’t coming,” she said in a benevolent tone that didn’t entirely hide her disapproval of our tardiness.
The coolness of her greeting was in stark contrast to the bear hug and resounding kisses my father would have offered and made me realize one of the reasons I hated coming home was the fact that Daddy was no longer there to welcome me.
A muscle ticked in Bill’s cheek, the only indication that Mother’s attitude had annoyed him. He seldom showed anger, not because he didn’t feel it, but because he’d learned over the years to effectively leash his deep rage, an appropriate response to the injustices he’d encountered on the job and in his personal life. I watched as he somehow managed to bleed the tension from his body and relax, a skill I envied.
“If we’re late, Mrs. Skerritt,” Bill said, “it’s my fault. I lingered too long admiring the beautiful grounds of your house. A fitting prelude, I might add, to its exquisite interior.”
Mother’s stiff demeanor softened slightly. “You must be Mr. Malcolm.”
“Please, call me Bill.” He gave her his warmest smile, the one that had caused hardened criminals to spill their guts in the interview rooms, and grasped her hand in both of his. I watched in amazement as the Iron Magnolia succumbed to his charm, a quality that made Bill irresistible. He had, hands down, the best people skills of anyone I’d ever met.
“And you must call me Priscilla,” she insisted.
I almost swallowed my tongue. Mother rarely allowed anyone to call her by her first name. In fact, I’d heard it so seldom, I’d almost forgotten it.
“Priscilla,” Bill said. “It suits you. Very regal.”
Mother did appear regal in her floor-length skirt of black taffeta, a high-necked, white silk blouse with long sleeves, a cummerbund in gold-and-black plaid, and her snowy hair piled high like a crown.
Leaving me trailing in their wake, she escorted Bill deeper into the courtyard to meet the usual suspects. My sister, Caroline, looking like a younger clone of Mother in both dress and hairstyle, although her tresses were a golden bottle-blond, sipped a martini and eyed Bill with interest over the rim of her glass. Her husband, Huntington Yarborough, a big man whose usual florid complexion had turned an even deeper red after a few drinks, rose from his seat by the fountain where he was nursing what looked to be a double Scotch.
Michelle, their oldest daughter, and her husband, Chad, hovered in a far corner with my nephew Robert and his wife, Sandra. My four great-nieces and great-nephews were conspicuously absent, either at home with a sitter or farmed out to their other grandparents. Mother was adamant that small children had no place at social functions, not even family holiday celebrations.
Bill, well-versed in my family tree and its twisted branches, met and greeted each of my relatives with his usual ease. A waiter appeared and took our drink orders.
“So,” Bill said to Hunt, “Margaret tells me you’re in the insurance business.”
I suppressed a groan. Once Hunt began talking business, there was no stopping him. I’d dozed through many of his dinner-table monologues.
Hunt pounced on Bill like a puppy on a bone. “You name it, I insure it. Property and casualty, life and health, annuities. I can do all your financial planning—”
Someone grasped my elbow and a familiar voice said, “How are you, Margaret? I haven’t seen you in too many years.”
Seton Fellows, Daddy’s best friend, smiled down at me from his extraordinary height of six foot five. The best neurologist in the Tampa Bay area, the man was a giant in the medical profession, as my father had been. His thinning gray hair matched his deep gray eyes, but the age that lined his face hadn’t affected his erect posture or his usually sunny disposition.
“What a nice surprise, Dr. Fellows. Mother didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“It was a last-minute invitation,” he said with a conspiratorial wink. “Your mother needed an even number at the table.”
Bill’s last-minute inclusion had thrown off Mother’s seating arrangement. “Lucky for us,” I assured him. “How have you been?”
His gray eyes clouded. “Lonely. This will be my first Thanksgiving without Nancy. So it’s good to be with friends.”
“You’ve known Mother and Daddy a long time, haven’t you?”
He nodded and sipped his drink. “Philip and I were in medical school together.”
Across the courtyard, Mother and Caroline hung on Hunt’s every word, and somehow even Bill managed to appear interested. With Dr. Fellows as my captive audience, I had found someone who might satisfy my curiosity about my parents’ early years, a time neither had discussed, at least, not with me. Their large wedding portrait hung in the sitting room of the master suite, but neither Mother nor Daddy had ever talked about the few years prior to or immediately following their marriage.
“What were they like then?” I asked Seton.
“Your parents?”
I nodded. “Before Daddy became Pelican Bay’s best cardiologist.”
The lines in his face crinkled with amusement. “Philip, as all of us, worked long, hard hours.”
“And Mother?”
His hesitation was brief but notable. “She organized the wives’ association. Not many female medical students in those days. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “They were so different from each other. I never could understand the attraction.”
“They complemented each other, like yin and yang. Your mother took charge of everything outside of work, which freed your father to be the brilliant doctor that he was.”
“Did they love each other?”
“They were married for almost fifty years.”
“Were they happy?”
“Happiness means different things to different people.”
He had sidestepped my question, but before I could rephrase it, Mother rang a small silver bell with all the drama of a stage production, and Dr. Fellows hurried to escort her into the adjacent dining room.
The florist and caterers had transformed the room. I pictured a television reality show, “How the Rich and Famous Celebrate Thanksgiving,” as I observed the towering topiaries of chrysanthemums, colorful autumn leaves and deep green ivy that marched down the center of the massive refectory table that had once graced an ancient Spanish monastery. Gigantic cornucopia, overflowing with fruits and gourds, flanked the silver serving dishes on the matching sideboard. The table was set with Mother’s heavy silver flatware and engraved napkin rings and covered with enough white damask for a circus tent.
We stood behind our chairs, waiting for Mother to be seated. I thought longingly of the weathered pine table in the sunny kitchen and wished Bill and I could share our meal there with Estelle.
Mother rang her silver bell again. “Dr. Fellows will say grace.”
Before I bowed my head, I caught a sympathetic look from Bill, who had been assigned the seat across from me.
“Heavenly Father,” Dr. Fellows began.
The beeper on my belt shrilled, shattering the room’s quiet.
“Really, Margaret,” Mother said with no effort to hide her disapproval. “Can’t you turn that thing off?”
Dr. Fellows smiled, but Caroline, Michelle and Sandra glared with as much disapproval as if I’d just stripped topless.
“I’m on call, Mother. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll use the phone in the foyer. Please, go ahead. Don’t wait for me.”
I’d have felt relief at being snatched from the jaws of social responsibility, but I knew a summons on a holiday had to be bad news.
I was right.
Darcy Wilkins answered at dispatch when I phoned the station. “We’ve got a drowning at a private residence on the beach.”
“Accidental?”
“It’s your call,” she said. “The M.E.’s on her way.”
She gave me the address. I braced for Mother’s disapproval and returned to the dining room to announce my regrets.
CHAPTER 4
Bill dropped me off at my condo, where I picked up my car for the trek to the beach. As I drove across the causeway, I saw that the city crews had already strung Christmas lights and decorations, and their festive glitter provided an ironic contrast to my mission. Even if the reported drowning turned out to be accidental, one family would have their future Thanksgiving holidays marred forever by memories of tragedy.
The causeway emptied into the commercial district of the beach, high-rise hotels and condos, restaurants, fishing piers and dozens of shops crammed with T-shirts and tacky tourist souvenirs made in Taiwan. The streets were crowded with out-of-state and rental cars and the sidewalks filled with folks who had forfeited the traditions of home for a holiday in the sun.
I turned north and the asphalt of the commercial district gave way to ancient brick streets. Homes, modest in size and style but worth a small fortune because of their beach location, lined the roadway. The street ended at a huge wrought-iron gate, more symbolic than obstructive, since it always stood open. It marked the entrance to the beach’s most upscale residential area, Yacht Club Estates. I drove past the clubhouse where, a few weeks ago, I’d apprehended two armed punks attempting to rob my mother. Most of the houses were screened from the road by massive hedges, since their coveted views came from the Intracoastal Waterway on the east side of the street or the white sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico on the west. The price of real estate on this end of the beach started at seven figures, then soared like a bottle rocket.
A few blocks past the yacht club, another ornate gate loomed, this barrier the real deal with an electronic surveillance system and pass-card entry. Tonight, however, the usually locked gates stood ajar. Death, the great leveler, hadn’t needed a key to infiltrate this bastion of the wealthy.
I drove through the open portal and approached the cluster of vehicles gathered on the beach side of the street. A P.B.P.D. green-and-white and a paramedics’ van stood with their emergency lights strobing the adjacent sea grape hedges with flashes of red and blue. Adler’s SUV was parked beside the cruiser. After I climbed from my car, he met me at the break in the hedge.
“I’d hoped we’d get through the day without a call,” he said. “No such luck.”
“Did you miss dinner?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We ate early, so I’m missing only football games and the washing up. How about you?”
“No big deal.” I felt only a momentary twinge of guilt over the fact that I’d rather work a signal seven than have Thanksgiving with my relatives. “Who’s the vic?”
“Vincent Lovelace.”
“The cable channel giant?”
“Founder and owner of Your Vacation Channel. And from the looks of this house, this guy didn’t need a vacation. He lived one.”
“He’s on permanent holiday now.”
Adler nodded. “Paramedics pronounced him when they arrived. Doc Cline’s on the way.”
We stepped through the gate in the hedge and the house, a huge four-story tower of glass and steel with lights blazing from every level, rose in front of me. I could see through the rooms of the first floor to the brightly illuminated terrace with its lap pool and the beach and Gulf beyond. On the pool deck lay the body of Vincent Lovelace. Rudy Beaton, a P.B.P.D. patrol officer, was taking statements from two paramedics. A woman with wet hair sat huddled in a blanket on a deck chair on a raised terrace at the north end of the pool.
I recognized Mrs. Lovelace instantly. Until that moment, I’d forgotten that Vincent had married Samantha Weston, daughter of Mother’s best friend Isabelle. With a sinking feeling, I knew, no matter how this investigation sorted out, Mother was not going to be happy.
I walked through the house with its minimalist furnishings, enough vibrant splashes of primary colors for a Jackson Pollock canvas or a day-care center, and immaculate housekeeping. The whole place looked as if it had been staged for a photography shoot for a spread in Architectural Digest. Classical music, a Vivaldi mandolin concerto, flowed from surround-sound speakers and blended with the crash of the surf from the adjacent beach. Sandalwood-scented candles glowed on the fireplace mantel and coffee table but couldn’t quite mask the cooking aromas from an earlier meal.
Adler and I stepped onto the patio where Rudy met us.
“The wife called 911,” he said. “Said she found her husband on the bottom of the pool. Pulled him out and tried CPR, but couldn’t revive him. He was dead when the paramedics got here.”
“Anyone else in the house?” I asked.
Beaton shook his head.
I rounded the pool and scanned the victim. His abbreviated Speedo revealed the tan, fit body of a man clearly in his prime. A large gash ran down his left temple below his thick dark hair.
“Secure the scene and call in the Crime Scene Unit,” I told Rudy.
Beaton raised his eyebrows. “CSU? This is an accident, right?”
“We’ve yet to determine that. Ask the paramedics to clear their equipment and wait in the bus.” I turned to Adler. “Check with the neighbors. Find out if they saw or heard anything. I’ll interview the wife.”
Before I approached Samantha Lovelace, I studied the scene. The narrow lap pool ran parallel to the house along the western edge of the forty-foot terrace. At the south end of the pool, a wrought-iron deck chair lay on its side. Water puddled around it. A few feet away, a pole protruded at an angle from a clump of sea oats that edged the terrace. Closer inspection revealed a long-handled skimmer net. Several feet north of the overturned chair, Lovelace’s body lay in another large puddle of water, apparently where his wife had dragged him from the pool.
I stared at the beach beyond the terrace. Something was wrong with the picture and I took a moment to figure it out. A wide swath of sand, leading from the terrace between the dunes to the water’s edge, had been carefully raked, like the terrain in a Japanese garden. Nothing disturbed the perfection of the white sugar-sand, no footprints, not even bird tracks, although, in the light of the rising moon, a night heron skittered through the breakers farther up the beach. Several different-size feet had made deep impressions in the sand on either side of the raked area where people had walked the shoreline before the intervening sand had been smoothed. To the west stretched the seemingly unending expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, reflecting a swath of silver moonlight. The scene was peaceful and serene.
Except for the dead body on the pool deck beside me.
“What have we got?”
I jumped at the sudden voice at my elbow. Doris Cline, wearing her usual running shoes, had sneaked up on me. For someone who’d been called out on a holiday, she looked unusually perky, more like a gung-ho, high school, physical education teacher with her bouncy gray curls, wide smile and bright eyes, than a medical examiner.
“You’ll have a dead detective if you keep scaring me like that. Sorry to ruin your Thanksgiving.”
Doc nodded toward the body on the pool deck. “Mine’s not half as ruined as his. What happened?”
I walked her through the scenario I’d garnered from the evidence. “Here, at this first puddle, Lovelace’s head somehow came in contact with that overturned wrought-iron chair. There’s blood on the metal arm. Then he went into the water. His wife claims she found him in the pool, dragged him out and tried CPR.”
Doc knelt on the flagstone decking, poked a finger into the first puddle of water and lifted it to her mouth. I shuddered at the gesture, but figured clear water was the least gross of the fluids Doc had to deal with.
She lifted her eyebrows. “Salt. Was he swimming in the Gulf first?”
“Not unless he raked the beach behind him when he came out, and there’s no rake in sight.”
Doc approached the body and scrutinized the victim. “Bleeding on the temple indicates he was alive when this injury was sustained. Those long scrapes on his chest, however, were post mortem. Probably occurred when he was dragged from the pool.” She lifted the victim’s right hand that sported a diamond the size of a walnut set in a gold band.
“The fact that he’s still wearing that rock rules out robbery,” I said.
Doc checked his left hand with its plain gold wedding band. “His nails on both hands are broken and the tips of his fingers are scraped.”
“Signs of a struggle?”
She nodded. “As if he tried to claw his way out of the pool.”
“Could he have been groggy from the blow to his head, so stunned that he couldn’t pull himself out of the water?”
“I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Had he been in the water long?”
She shook her head.
The CSU team arrived. While Doc continued her examination of the body, I asked the techs to take samples of the two puddles and also water from the pool, as well as the blood from the chair arm. After requesting that they bag the skimmer net, I headed toward Samantha.
Although the day had been warm, the night breeze off the chilly Gulf waters was cold, and in her chair on the raised deck, Samantha was shivering. How much from physical discomfort and how much from emotional distress, I couldn’t tell.
“Why don’t we go inside where it’s warmer,” I suggested.
She looked up with a shell-shocked expression and recognition flitted across her deep blue eyes. “I know you.”
“Maggie Skerritt.” I took her arm, tugged her from the patio chair and led her into the living room.
“Margaret? Priscilla’s daughter? What are you doing here?”
“I’m a detective with the Pelican Bay Police Department.”
With the wooden expression of a sleepwalker, she sank into a chrome-and-leather chair beside a fireplace with a mirrored surround and tugged the blanket closer. She picked up a remote control from a side table, pointed it at the fireplace and punched a button. Flames flared from a gas log. Shaking her head, as if clearing mental fog, she asked, “Why are the police here?”
“Standard procedure whenever there’s a death.”
Samantha was ten years younger than I was. She’d always been a beauty and either good genes or a great plastic surgeon had preserved that youthful attractiveness into her late thirties. But with her makeup ruined by pool water and tears, her face appeared ravaged. My job was to sort out how much of that effect had been produced by genuine grief.
I glanced at a massive portrait of two tow-headed little girls holding a Jack Russell terrier puppy that hung above the fireplace. Their resemblance to Samantha as a child was unmistakable.
“You have children?” I asked.
“Two daughters. Emily’s sixteen. Dana’s almost fifteen.” Her face crumpled and fresh tears streaked her cheeks. “How am I going to tell them their father’s gone?”
“Where are they?”
She glanced at a stylized clock of crystal and brass on the mantel. “Landing in Colorado. We had dinner at noon. Then they left with our neighbors, the Standifords, for a week of skiing in Aspen.”
“I know this is hard, Samantha, but I need you to tell me what happened right up to the point you pulled your husband from the pool.”
She inhaled a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “After dinner, we loaded the girls’ luggage and ski equipment into the Standifords’ SUV. After they left for the airport, I put away leftovers and cleaned up the kitchen.”
“And your husband?”
“He was working in his study.” She nodded toward a room at the south end of the house. “He’s always working. We were lucky he took time to eat with us today.” Her voice was hard with annoyance before she broke into fresh sobs. “That was the last meal we’ll ever have as a family.”
“And after that?” I prodded. I felt sympathy for her, but the quicker I completed my questions, the sooner I could leave her to her grief.
She wiped her nose with a corner of the blanket, a rough utilitarian item provided by the paramedics. “Vince was still working. I felt a migraine coming on, so I took my medication and went upstairs to take a nap.”
“How long did you sleep?”
Her eyes, filled with agony, gazed up at me. “It was my fault, wasn’t it?”
“Why do you say that?”
“If I hadn’t been asleep, I might have found him in time to save him.”
“Had your husband been drinking?”
She gave a short laugh, more like a hiccup. “Not a chance. He’s a fitness addict. Never touches alcohol or red meat.”
“Did he have an illness or take medication that might have made him dizzy and caused him to fall?”
She shook her head. “Vince just had a physical. His doctor told him he has the body of a twenty-year-old.”
And now Vince Lovelace would be forever young. “Did your husband swim every day?”
“Like clockwork.” The edge returned to her voice. “He always swims laps in the pool every evening before dinner. If he’d shown the same diligence toward his family….”
Trouble in paradise, but discord didn’t necessarily generate foul play. “Did your husband have enemies?”
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