by Diane Capri
All of us inched up one car length. The routine was repeated with the second car, and then the third. By this time, I’d waited in line longer than it took me to drive there. Finally, finally, finally, the security guard approached my car. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “How are you today?”
I swallowed my impatience. Everyone else seemed to be on island time, so I tried to fit in by appearing laid back. I don’t think he could see my toes tapping, but I’m not sure. “Fine, thank you. I’m here to see Carly Austin. I think I’m on her access list. Please don’t call up. It’s her birthday and I want to surprise her.” I smiled my brightest smile, flirting with him a little. How old was I when I figured out that older men are easily manipulated by a woman who flirts?
“And what’s your name, miss? I’ll just look it up quickly and then I can let you in,” he said with a big, conspiratorial smile. I gave him my name as I looked in my rear view mirror.
I could see no police cars, or at least no marked police cars, either behind me in line or coming up the driveway. There was a satisfyingly long line developing, and I was pretty sure that a police car would have the same difficulty getting through the gate I’d had. Once the cars had lined up at the guard shack, there was nowhere for them to go but through the gate into the complex. The cops would have to wait their turn like everybody else.
Eventually, the guard returned from the shack with my visitor’s pass and a smile. He opened the gate and waived me through. He said, “Say happy birthday to Ms. Austin for me. I thought she was out of town. She’s one of our most pleasant residents and I haven’t seen her much lately.”
“Thank you,” I sang, smiling and wiggling my fingers at him as I went through the gate, watching the orange and white arm of the gate fall down behind my car.
I drove into the complex, looking all the while for a police car or uniformed police officers from Pinellas County or the City of St. Petersburg. I didn’t see any.
When I got to Carly’s apartment, I picked up the fake rock out of the planter next to the door. It was easy to find because the flowers hadn’t been watered in so long they were all dead. I opened the false slide on the fake rock, pulled out what I hoped was the real key and let myself in. Carly’s apartment complex was on a small peninsula that’s particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. Because of the building codes, the garage was on the first floor and the apartment was one floor up. It’s a town house style, and the stairway opens into a great room combination of living room, kitchen and dining room. In other words, once you got to the top of the stairs, there was no place to hide except the bedrooms and the closets. I started calling out to Carly as I walked up. I heard nothing. As I came up the stairs and looked into the great room, I could see that the guard was right. Although Carly hadn’t been there for quite some time, someone else had been; it was impossible to tell how long ago.
Things were strewn everywhere. The furniture was upended and the fabric bottoms of the chairs and couch were sliced open. The throw cushions were thrown, all right, but they were sliced, too. I looked into the guest room, and the shambles was the same. Just the way Carly had described the search at Dr. Morgan’s house. I opened the door to the master bedroom, still calling Carly’s name. As soon as I walked in the door, I felt a bowling ball fall on my head. I hit the floor, just like a bowling pin. Strike. They all fall down.
When I woke up, it was dark outside. I tried to raise myself off the floor but the second I lifted my head, it began pounding the way Spielberg showed the footfalls of an approaching T-Rex and I felt nauseated. I laid back down, slowly, slowly, and the room stopped spinning. In fact, it felt so good to lie there, I took another nap.
The next time I woke up, faint daylight showed through the mini blinds. I knew I’d been there way too long. I was thinking well enough to understand that George would be worried sick about me and for some reason, no police officers had ever appeared. For that matter, neither had Carly.
I tried once again to get up by raising the top half of my body. No sudden moves this time. Nice and easy. I thought I was talking to myself, but I realized I didn’t hear my voice. The thudding in my head sounded like Indian war drums and, while I still felt queasy, I thought I might be able to sit up. I tried it, gingerly, and had to wait a few minutes for the room to stop spinning. But I didn’t throw up and I took that as a good sign.
I tried to stand and the magnitude of it nearly knocked me down again. I laid back down. I’d wait a few minutes, take it easy, look around. No hurry. After a while, I figured out that I wasn’t too far from the bedside phone. I sort of scooched over there on my stomach so I didn’t have to actually sit up. After three or four hours, I made it to the telephone. I laid back against the bed, exhausted. Maybe I’d just take another nap, then I’d have enough strength to move forward. That’s not such a bad idea, right? No, better call George instead. He’ll be worried. Just take several deep breaths and try to stop your hands from shaking so you can dial the phone, and then you can take a nap.
After a while, I was able to reach up and grab the phone. Thankfully, it was a model with the buttons in the receiver. I dialed Minaret first. Evie, the hostess, answered the phone with the voice she uses for callers making reservations. It must have been dusk, and not dawn. How wonderful. I had to clear my throat three times before I could speak.
“Evie.” The first time it came out so softly. I didn’t recognize my voice and I was sure Evie wouldn’t either, even if she could hear me. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Evie.”
I could hear her saying “Hello? Is anyone there?” over and over. I tried the third time.
“Evie.” I shouted. My head started to vibrate again. My eyes were impersonating Niagra Falls. My voice must have been a mere whisper, but enough for Evie to catch it. I’m going to recommend to George that she get a raise, I thought.
“Evie, it’s Willa. Get George. Now.” I tried to put as much authority into my voice as I could, but I knew it didn’t sound like me. To her credit, Evie didn’t ask any more questions, she just asked me to hold on while she got George. A big raise.
After a few minutes, George came on the line. “Wil? Willa, is that you?” I heard him. I was so relieved. I acknowledged the tears leaking out of my eyes from the sheer effort of trying to avoid them. When I heard George, I began to cry harder. It was several moments before I could answer him. In the meantime, his voice was getting more frantic and he just kept repeating the same thing over and over. “Willa, is that you? Willa, is that you?” Finally, I managed to pull myself together enough to whisper/shout into the phone. “George, I’m at Carly’s. Come get me. And call Ben Hathaway.”
George kept trying to soothe me over the phone and find out if I’d been hurt. I just didn’t have the strength to talk any more so I hung up. Then I laid down on the floor and went back to sleep.
The next time I woke up, George and two Tampa police officers were in the room. Ben Hathaway was there too. George was holding me, helping me to sit up, treating me like a china doll even though my body was behaving like a rag doll. I’m lucky to have George, I remember thinking. George always takes care of me.
Ben Hathaway wasn’t interested in how I felt. “Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? Why didn’t you tell me where Carly lived? We’ve been trying to track down her home address ever since I left you yesterday!” Hathaway was truly angry. His yelling caused my head to pound harder and louder.
“Compound question,” I said weakly as I laid my head on George’s chest and closed my eyes. I don’t know if they heard me or not. I couldn’t say anything else. I heard George ask for an ambulance. When it came, we left.
The ambulance took me to General Hospital (really) where there were no obvious doctor/nurse affairs going on, but our good friend and family physician met us. They did a CT scan of my head and decided there was nothing wrong with it that two weeks rest and ten years of psychotherapy wouldn’t help.
At my insistence, they released me into George
’s custody and we went home. By the time we got back to Minaret, it occurred to me that I had, for the first time in my short career as a judge, and my entire career as a lawyer, missed a scheduled day of trial. I was just too tired and too hurt to care. I didn’t call the office or make any excuses. When we got back to Minaret, I fell into bed. George woke me every four hours to make sure I wasn’t dead. I might as well have been; I didn’t wake up again until the next day.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tampa, Florida
Tuesday 2:00 p.m.
January 19, 1999
BY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I was thinking that in two more weeks I’d begin to feel like a human being. Never again would I believe those movies where the hero gets bopped on the head and jumps right back up for another round. They hadn’t found whatever it was I’d been hit with in Carly’s apartment, so I was still insisting on the bowling ball theory. If it wasn’t a bowling ball, I don’t ever want to be hit on the head with anything again.
George brought a tray to the bedroom with some fabulous consommé and fresh bread. Then, looking a little like a new colt with wobbly legs, I walked into the den and sat down. George seemed relieved I was up and about and eating. He made me hot tea and told me that he had called my office, told Margaret that I was ill and asked her to cancel the trial for the remainder of the week. The lawyers and their clients were angry but couldn’t very well argue with the explanation. George called the CJ and explained that I had a bad fall and was being treated at home for a concussion. The CJ, true to form, was solicitous of my health. Although we have our little test of wills going, he would never admit to anyone that he wasn’t able to control his own team.
Once George figured out that I was going to survive, he released his vivid anger. He went on for quite a while, but I only tuned in to the last part. “Wilhelmina, what in the hell is wrong with you? Did it not occur to you that someone could go with you to Carly’s apartment? Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? I would have gone along.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You would have tried to talk me out of it, and you know it. You would have said, let Ben Hathaway handle it.” I tried talking calmly the way I’ve seen television cops calm raving lunatics. It didn’t seem to be working.
“So what if I had? That certainly would have been the more reasonable thing to do, anyway. If you’d done that, then whoever hit you might be in police custody now as opposed to you sitting there in that chair just barely able to move around.” I can’t remember a time when George had ever been so angry with me. In the seventeen years we’ve been married, we’ve had relatively few fights. The ones we have had were almost always over my personal safety. I knew his reaction stemmed from concern for me, but it made me bristle nonetheless.
“George Carson, you can just stop trying to boss me around. I don’t do what you want me to do or what you say I should, and you know it. I make my own decisions.”
“And a fine one this was.” He said as he stomped off out of the room, leaving me and my pride to deal with my pounding head, which had returned with the shouting. I sank back on the pillows and closed my eyes.
After he left me with my dignity intact, I had to admit to myself that he might have been right. Unless it was Carly who hit me, which I couldn’t believe. And then I realized that I’d heard nothing about Carly or where she was and I didn’t know if anyone else had heard from her. I still wasn’t strong enough to get up and walk after George, but I could reach the phone.
I called Hathaway. This time, when I asked to be connected, his secretary said he was out of the office. I told her Judge Carson was calling and asked him to call me back. She said she’d give him the message. I had the impression that he’d left standing orders with her that he wasn’t to be bothered by Judge Carson. Ben can be so pouty.
I tried reaching Carly at home and at the office, and I tried again to call her car phone. As before, no answer, no answer and no answer. Then, it occurred to me to check my voice mail. When I did, there was a message from Carly. Technology is so wonderful.
She’d left the message on Monday morning. Her voice sounded normal, which made me think she’d called from work where she believed her activities were constantly monitored. “Willa, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be going to Minneapolis for a few days and not to worry about me. I’ll be checking my voice mail, so leave me a message if you need to reach me.”
I replayed it three times because I couldn’t believe she hadn’t said anything more, and then I saved it so I could hear it again later if I needed to. I hung up the phone softly and tried to think logically about why Carly would be traveling to Minneapolis and when she would be back.
I saw that George had saved the newspapers the last two days and I picked them up to look through them. In this morning’s paper, on the front page of the Florida Metro section, was a small article with a headline which read “Body Identified as Local Plastic Surgeon.”
Two columns, about four inches long, and after a few minutes I was able to focus my eyes well enough to read it.
The body discovered in Tampa Bay near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge two weeks ago was, in life, Dr. Michael Morgan, a local plastic surgeon.
The body, following autopsy, contained abnormally high levels of alcohol. Although it appeared Dr. Morgan was a victim of foul play, it also appeared that he was intoxicated at the time of death. He had been plagued in recent years by debts. His estate was valued at less than $10,000. He left several ex-wives, and no children.
Grover was interviewed. He was quoted as saying that he’d had no contact with Dr. Morgan since settling a 1990 malpractice case against Morgan, and he assumed Morgan was living a quiet life.
Chief Ben Hathaway was quoted as saying that the investigation into Dr. Morgan’s death was ongoing and his department was pursuing several suspects.
A similar article appeared in the Times. In the Times obituary, many of Dr. Morgan’s past accomplishments were listed. He had graduated from medical school at the age of twenty-five and then served his internship, residency and specialty residency all at the Mayo Clinic. He opened his practice in Tampa in 1970. He had been the plastic surgeon to Tampa’s stars for several years until he succumbed to drug abuse. A series of malpractice claims followed, culminating in the case which caused him to surrender his license. Dr. Morgan was brilliant. He wrote several major articles and two textbooks. One of the textbooks, on immunology, had made him a millionaire. It was rumored that his will left the continuing royalties from his books to local lawyer Carly Austin. Certain specific bequests and the remainder of his assets went to charity. Ms. Austin had not been available for comment.
I shook my head and blinked several times to clear my blurred vision. That couldn’t be right. He left royalties from his books, potentially millions of dollars, to Carly? I read it through twice more. I couldn’t believe Carly knew she’d inherited from Morgan, but I knew someone would quickly misconnect the dots and draw a jail cell around Carly’s body. I was getting in deeper and deeper. Even a good swimmer can drown if she’s too far out in the Gulf.
Morgan’s funeral was to be held the next day. Since the autopsy was completed and no family to notify, there was no reason to wait. A closed casket, obviously. We got there just before the service started.
Even though it was such short notice, and held in the middle of the week, the church was full. Nothing like the funeral of a locally notorious man murdered in his own home to bring out the curious and the faithful. Then there were the real mourners. Those were the ones I was interested in and why I had convinced George we should go even though I was far from back to normal.
“Michael Morgan may have been a good man at some time in his life, but by the time somebody killed him, he deserved it.” Dr. Marilee Aymes said as she sat down in the pew beside me. George frowned his best at her, signifying his desire that she be quiet in church, but she was unfazed.
“He was a thief, and someone stole his life from him. Poetic justice,” she said.
I looked around the church more carefully. Almost every woman in the room was over fifty-five, long past the age for low necklines or see though tight bodiced frocks. But there they were. Only Dr. Aymes and I and a few others didn’t fit the profile, as it were.
“Look at all those perfect Morgans.” Her voice, still loud, startled me.
“What?”
“Just look around. Have you ever seen so many perfect tits in one room? ‘A pair of Morgans’ we used to call them. We could always tell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tampa, Florida
Wednesday 3:15 p.m.
January 20, 1999
GEORGE GLARED HER INTO silence just as Dr. Carolyn Young walked by us. She was dressed head to toe in black and had a veil over her face. She walked up to the closed casket and knelt in front of it. From the back I could see her shoulders shaking. She stayed there so long one of the ushers went up to her and helped her to a seat in the front pew—the one usually reserved for family—which was empty.
It seemed all of Tampa society filled Sacred Heart Church for the occasion. Cilla and O’Connell Worthington were there, Fred Johnson, Christian Grover, Sheldon and Victoria Warwick, even Kate. Probably the first time that many Tampa WASPs had gathered in a Catholic Church since the mayor remarried ten years ago.
The priest who delivered the glowing eulogy was a young man who obviously hadn’t known Dr. Morgan. If he knew anything about Morgan’s less illustrious accomplishments, he refrained from mentioning them.
