Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  The only first-hand knowledge I had about Gil came from one Saturday afternoon a few years ago when he was at Minaret waiting for George. I later learned he wanted George to buy shares in his bank but, at the time, I didn’t know anything about Gil except that he was a local banker.

  George had been a banker in Detroit before we moved here, so I thought Gil Kelley was making a social call. Comrades in arms and all that.

  Anyway, I had gone downstairs to greet him and he not only hugged and kissed me, he tried to stick his tongue down my throat. I pulled away from him and would have slapped him silly, except that George came in right at that moment and I didn’t want to make an already bad situation worse.

  I found out later that Gil Kelley had done something like that with every woman I knew. And I stayed clear of him ever after. I’d never told George why I didn’t want to be alone with Gil Kelley, but George has a built-in radar for quality people. He never liked Gil and we didn’t discuss it.

  Gil and Sandra Kelley had joined Minaret Krewe, but they just never made it to our list of friends. Since I hadn’t told George about my Gil Kelley encounter, I wasn’t going to tell Dad about it now. So I repeated the gossip I’d heard from Marilee Aymes instead.

  After I finished, I asked him, “Why are you so interested in Gil Kelley, Dad? It’s not that he’s been flirting with Suzanne so shamefully, is it?”

  “Maybe,” he grinned. “But that’s not all. I believe Kelley has either personally embezzled several million dollars from the bank and its depositors, or he’s covering up for someone else who’s done it. I think it’s been going on for years, and I plan to prove it.”

  “What evidence do you have so far?” I asked, just as the lights flickered and the chimes sounded again signaling that Oklahoma’s second act was about to begin.

  “I’ll tell you about it later. At this point, I’ve reached a few dead ends. I’d like your thoughts,” he said.

  As we were returning to the play, Larry Davis, a lawyer with one of Tampa’s better law firms, approached me.

  “Willa, I’ll need about an hour of your time tomorrow, if you can manage it. I can come over to your office,” he said, over the constant chimes calling us back to our seats.

  “I’ve always got time for my friends, Larry, but my calendar is very full. What’s up?”

  “I’d rather not discuss the whole thing here, but I was Ron Wheaton’s lawyer and my firm did his estate plan. He came to see me about a month ago and changed his will.”

  “Yes?”

  “The new will names you as his executor.”

  I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d told me Ron had left me all his money. I knew Ron, but we weren’t confidantes. Ron hadn’t called or said anything to me about being the executor of his estate.

  “Does Margaret know?”

  “I haven’t told her, and I don’t believe Ron did, either.”

  “Maybe I’d better come to see you, then. I don’t want to upset Margaret until we have this figured out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Tampa, Florida

  Monday 9:00 a.m.

  February 19, 2001

  MONDAY MORNING CAME WITH the precision of a universe still on its axis, time moving inexorably forward, as it normally does.

  I have always been fascinated by the concept of time travel. Many times I’ve wanted to go back and change mistakes made during my course in Life 101. It would be fun to travel to other times and other cultures. I could see Mom again, know my grandparents, be present when great world events occurred.

  I like the theory that everything in the universe now exists in the same time zone and that’s why déjà vu happens—that you get a glimpse of other things going on in the space-time continuum simultaneously with your life.

  For me, though, time marches forward, seconds at a time, to be sure, but steadily forward, leaving me no choice but to continue along with it.

  Although her husband had been dead only two weeks, Margaret had arrived at the office before me and there was a waiting room full of fashionably monochromatic grey-suited, grey-tied, lawyers there as well. I nodded to them all, acknowledged them with the traditional, “Counsel,” and strode forward into my chambers to prepare for the long queue of pre-trial conferences scheduled today.

  My law clerks and the court reporter came in right behind me and we started to work. Four hours later, the last of the day’s matters was being discussed between the assistant U.S. Attorney and defense counsel.

  The case had been transferred to my courtroom from Miami by a judge who’d said the defendant couldn’t get a fair trial there. This is often a euphemism for “I’ve got too many cases on my docket and now I have a legitimate chance to get rid of one, so I’m going to do it.” Use this ploy too many times and other judges were likely to start returning the favor.

  I was zoning out when the case started, so I missed the initial statements by counsel and was more than a little shocked when I heard the assistant U.S. Attorney say a word I hadn’t heard in my courtroom before today.

  I held up my hand in the traditional “stop” position, palm out, and said, “Whoa, there. Come again?”

  He glanced at me as if I was a few bricks short of a load before he repeated it. “I said, the defendant, Mr. Aielo, was a member of a Philadelphia Mafia crime family in the 1980s, your honor. He’s being charged with Federal murder and robbery there in the death of a housewife.”

  “Mafia?” I repeated the foreign word again. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. I’m serious as a heart attack, Judge.” He appeared as seriously pained.

  “This is outrageous, Judge,” the defense attorney broke in. “Mr. Aielo is a legitimate businessman. He owns six popular night clubs in Miami. Before the case was transferred here, several of his customers put up their personal property to secure a fifteen-million dollar bail bond. What kind of criminal has those kinds of friends? The way our society works is that when someone comes from a rough neighborhood and turns his life around, becomes successful, they become a target. This is a vendetta by the U.S. Attorney, nothing more.”

  I was still shaking my head, as if my ears were stopped up. “Is this some kind of career case or something?” I asked the people’s lawyer. “Because I’ll tell you—Tampa is not Miami. We don’t have a Mafia mind-set here. Do you think you can make a Tampa jury understand what you’re talking about?”

  “We haven’t had Mafia running things here in more than twenty years, Judge, that’s true. But there was a time when the mob flourished here. There was a lot of illegal gambling, money laundering, loan-sharking. Mob guys were gunned down in the streets in the 1970s. Several high-profile cases were tried and mobsters sent to prison. There was even a Tampa mobster who was involved in the cases that resulted in the movie, Goodfellas.”

  He was attempting to impress me with a side to Tampa history I hadn’t known. It didn’t work.

  “Well, all of that was before my time. I doubt our jurors will have such long memories. Even so, why would I want to keep a case like this? Shouldn’t Mr. Aielo be tried in the state where his crime was allegedly committed?” I asked him pointedly.

  Now, I had the chance to transfer the case to another court, and I was sorely tempted to do it. Here on the bench in the Middle District of Florida, justice is too often delayed and denied in our courtrooms by the sheer volume of the work.

  The CJ, who has the moral responsibility to resolve this problem, to his credit, had been working to get us more judges. But so far, we were just slugging along as best we could.

  One case less would be a welcome gift, but would not lower the level of the water enough to cause me to transfer the case without good reason.

  “Judge, Mr. Aielo is a Floridian now. It would be a real hardship on him and his businesses to send him up to Philadelphia. And these are Federal charges. Surely the court can apply the law as well here as they can up North,” the assistant U.S. Attorney argued, in a blatant appeal to my van
ity. I imagined myself as a strong legal scholar and he obviously knew that.

  “Why shouldn’t I grant the State of Pennsylvania’s request for a transfer, then, Counsel? Surely, you have enough work to do down in Miami without this file? And,” I said, turning to the well-known celebrity defense counsel, “surely you would be defending Mr. Aielo in Philadelphia, as well? Mr. Aielo fled Philadelphia in what, it says here, 1986? Haven’t the people there waited long enough for justice?”

  Both of them started to sputter at once, confirming my hunch that both the cases in Miami and Philadelphia had strong possibilities of success.

  They argued a while longer over the various interests of the people of Miami versus the people of Philadelphia, while I snuck a surreptitious glance at my watch. It was one o’clock already. How time flies when you’re having fun, I thought, sourly, as I took the matter under advisement, told them I’d review their briefs and issue an order shortly. Then, I shooed everyone out of my chambers and sat down behind my desk for the first time that day.

  Margaret had brought me my usual working lunch of tuna salad on white with chips and a Diet Dr. Pepper. It sat invitingly on the right of my desk and today’s newspapers were folded neatly on the left. Pink slips were piled in the middle, the voice-mail light flashed on my phone, the message that I had e-mail waiting was in the middle of my computer screen, and the mail was piled a foot high above the in-box. In other words, it was a typical Monday.

  As I ate the sandwich, I flipped through the pink slips first. Three from the CJ. I threw those in the trash can with a small, rebellious smile.

  Messages from several of my colleagues on the bench about committee meetings and such. I scribbled answers to their questions on the slips and put them in a pile for Margaret to return their calls.

  We rarely talked to each other, my colleagues and I. Instead, our staffs called back and forth, relaying our questions and answers. We called it successful delegation. It was better than voice mail or e-mail because we didn’t have to actually do it ourselves. And it was less formal than the letters between justices that were the norm on the U.S. Supreme Court.

  After that exercise, I had three pink message slips left. One from Police Chief Ben Hathaway, with a note to “please call back,” and no clue as to why. One from Dad containing the same notation. And one from George that said, “Check the Tribune. Metro. Page three.” Curious.

  I took another bite of my sandwich, pulled the newspaper over toward me, started flipping through it, looking for the Metro section, as I cradled the receiver to my ear with my shoulder and waited for Dad to answer the phone. This is what they call “multi-tasking”—doing three or more things at once—and I’m a master at it. What woman isn’t?

  Just as I swallowed, Dad answered the phone and a small item in the Metro section, on page three, caught my eye.

  LOCAL MAN FOUND DEAD AFTER PARADE Sanitation workers cleaning up after the Knights of Sant’ Yago Illuminated Knight Parade found the body of Pass-a-Grille artist Armstrong Otter on Sixteenth Street in Ybor City early Sunday morning. Few details were available at press time, but it appears Otter may have fallen and hit his head on a sharp piece of broken concrete. Otter was taken to Tampa General Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

  “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?” Dad was saying. I was so dumbfounded by the Tribune article that I couldn’t answer. He must have heard something, though, because he said, “Willa? Is that you? Are you all right?”

  I got it together enough to answer him in a few seconds. “Uh,” I said. Not brilliant, but enough to keep Dad on the line.

  “Is something wrong? Willa? If you don’t answer me, I’m coming right over there. I see on the caller ID where you are.” He was starting to sound stern now, although it only could have been a few seconds since he picked up the phone.

  “Yes, Dad. I’m here. Just a second.” I took a swallow of my Diet Dr. Pepper to wet a throat suddenly too parched for speech, took a slow calming breath or two, and put the receiver back to my ear. “Okay. Sorry. I was just eating my lunch when you picked up the phone. Something must have gone down the wrong way.”

  Not an entirely truthful explanation, but not really a lie, either. I try to make it a point never to lie, even white lies that are meant to save other’s feelings. George believes lies diminish both the people who offer them and the people who accept them. It’s one of the things we agree on.

  It’s harder to tell the truth and still be tactful. Sometimes I fail the second half of the equation. But I still try not to lie, even if it gets me into trouble, which the truth often does.

  “What’s up?” I asked him. “You called me.”

  “I did?” he sounded genuinely perplexed.

  “According to this pink slip here on my desk, you called at three-forty-five this afternoon,” I told him, still distracted.

  “Willa, it’s only two-fifteen,” he said, gently.

  “Yes.”

  “How could I have called you over an hour from now?”

  I was not really listening. Or looking at the pink slip, either, apparently, which clearly said this message had come in last Friday.

  “Willa? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. I was just reading the paper. It says that Armstrong Otter died over the weekend. I guess I’m a little preoccupied.”

  I was thinking about Margaret and how she would react to this news; about the Fitzgerald House case, and what would happen to it; and most of all, about the man, Armstrong Otter, who was becoming such an interesting phenomenon to me and whose studio I had visited for the first time just two days ago.

  “Really? I wonder where Gil Kelley was at the time of the murder?” Dad sounded sarcastic. He was single-minded in his pursuit of Gil Kelley. To him, if it related to Kelley, it was a worthwhile conversation. Otherwise, not.

  I told him I needed to make some more calls and would see him at home tonight.

  Then I looked at the message slip saying Ben Hathaway had returned my call, made sure he had called today, and punched his private number. He picked up on the third ring, sounding harried and rushed, “Hathaway here.”

  “Willa Carson, Ben. What’s up?” I asked for the second time in the last ten minutes.

  “Just a second, Judge,” he said, covering the receiver with his hand and talking to someone else in muffled tones. I gathered up the rest of my sandwich and tossed it in the trash, collected my thoughts and waited. I heard what sounded like a door closing and Ben Hathaway was back on the phone.

  “Sorry, Judge. I’m in the middle of two homicide investigations here. I’d like to come by and ask Margaret Wheaton a few questions about the death of Armstrong Otter and her husband.”

  “When?” I squeaked.

  “Now,” he said. “I’d like to hang up, get in my car, and be there in ten minutes. Is she there?”

  I actually hadn’t seen Margaret since I walked in this morning.

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Well, do you think you can check?” he asked me, with barely suppressed impatience.

  I buzzed her and she answered.

  “Yes, she’s here.” I warned him, “And so am I.”

  I didn’t have much time to talk to Margaret before Hathaway arrived. She came in the room and I took a critical look at her for the first time since I’d seen her on the Minaret Krewe float Saturday night with Armstrong Otter. The night Otter died.

  To hear Hathaway tell it, Margaret was some sort of Dr. Jack Kavorkian, the physician convicted of helping terminal patients commit suicide. Or maybe he thought she was another Lizzie Borden, killing men for her own personal reasons.

  No one could have looked the part less.

  Sitting in one of the ugly green client chairs in front of my desk, Margaret appeared tranquil and relaxed, the same Margaret she always was.

  She’d been somewhat happier the last week or so, her face a little softer, fewer lines around her eyes. I imagined her improved mood was because she didn�
�t have the burden of dealing with her husband’s illness every day.

  “Ben Hathaway is coming over to talk to you,” I told her. I didn’t say why, and she didn’t ask. We discussed business until we heard the buzzer at the door, impatiently seeking entrance into my chambers. I got up and let him in.

  Hathaway is a big man, but he moves quickly. He blew into my reception area like a windstorm and walked right past me into my chambers before I had a chance to stick my tongue in my cheek, point and say, “She went that-a-way, Chief.”

  Perhaps he was worried that I’d sent Margaret off somewhere to avoid him. And I might have, except that I wanted to hear what she had to say as much as he did.

  “Mrs. Wheaton,” he nodded to her, as he sat in the other ugly green client chair across from my desk, pulled out his old-fashioned notebook, the small one with the spiral on the top, and rested it on his wide thigh.

  I closed the door to my chambers and sat behind my desk, my hands folded in my lap, watching them both closely.

  “Where were you on Saturday night between the hours of midnight and 3:00 a.m.?” was his first question, after the preliminaries.

  So that’s when Otter died, I thought, and made a mental note to recall where George and I had been, too.

  “I was in Ybor City, on the Minaret Krewe parade float. Why?” Margaret looked a little bewildered at this question.

  “The parade ended around eleven. I’m talking about after that.”

  “Oh. Well, I had coffee with Armstrong Otter at Joffrey’s down on Seventh Avenue, afterward. Why?”

  Again, he ignored her question and asked his own. “How long were you there with Mr. Otter?”

  “I don’t know. A half-hour or so, I guess. Why?” Margaret was embarrassed to admit she was with Otter in front of me. I’d specifically asked them both not to speak to each other, which they’d ignored and flaunted their disregard on the float Saturday night. I’d seen them together myself and done nothing. Now, I was sorry I hadn’t attempted to enforce my own advice.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN