Storm Season

by Charlotte Douglas

Violet answered the door. “Miss Skerritt, come in.”

  I stepped into the small living room filled with heavy Victorian furniture. Although the windows were open, air barely stirred inside the house, and the temperature seemed even warmer than outside, but Violet wore her usual cardigan.

  “We could sit on the porch—” she had lowered her voice to a whisper “—but if you’re here about J.D., he’s working in the backyard and might overhear us.”

  She waved me to a seat on a high-backed settee, and Bessie came in.

  “Bring us some iced tea,” Violet ordered her sister.

  Accepting her subservient role without protest, Bessie did an about-face to the kitchen, and Violet took the chair across from me.

  “I hope the evacuation wasn’t too hard on you,” I said.

  “Hard?” Violet laughed. “I can’t remember when Bessie and I have had so much fun. The shelter volunteers prepared all our meals. And we met the most fascinating people, who’d also evacuated. One couple helped us make up a foursome, and we spent most of our time playing bridge. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy the game. I was almost sorry when we had to leave and come home.”

  Violet’s positive attitude was probably a factor in her longevity. When life tossed her lemons, she made champagne.

  “I didn’t think J.D. would come back,” she said, “but he was here when we returned from the shelter, already picking up the debris left by the storm.”

  I peered through the open back door and across the porch and spotted J.D. digging in the sunny backyard. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Preparing a vegetable garden,” Violet said. “He really is the most thoughtful man. Says if he plants now, we may still have time to grow a winter crop.”

  I had to give J.D. credit. As strapped as the Lassiters were for income, fresh vegetables would be a welcome addition to their diet. But just because J.D. was behaving generously and responsibly now didn’t mean he wouldn’t snap sooner or later if he had a psychological problem that had caused his amnesia and put him on the streets. He could be a ticking time bomb right under two sweet old ladies’ noses.

  “I need your help,” I said to Violet and Bessie, who’d come back from the kitchen with a tray filled with glasses of iced tea. “If I can have something with J.D.’s fingerprints, I’ll see if there’s a match in the national data bank.”

  “You think he’s a criminal?” Violet asked in disbelief.

  “The system holds more than fingerprints of criminals,” I said. “Everyone who’s been in the military, taught school, worked for the government or needed a security clearance has been fingerprinted.”

  Bessie placed the tray on the low table between Violet and me and picked up one of the glasses. “I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried across the back porch and out into the yard. I watched as J.D. set aside his shovel, accepted the glass from Bessie and downed its contents in a few swallows. He returned the glass. Fortunately, he also resumed his digging, so he didn’t notice Bessie holding the glass by the rim between her thumb and index finger to avoid smudging his prints.

  “Do you have a plastic bag?” I asked Violet.

  She went into the kitchen and returned with a grocery sack. When Bessie came in, I took the glass from her and wrapped it in the plastic.

  “How soon will you know anything?” Bessie asked.

  “Identifying the prints could take some time,” I said. “I’ll have to call in a favor from someone in law enforcement with access to the database, and they’ll have to work it into their schedule. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t be sorry,” Violet said with a smile. “That will give J.D. time to get the garden planted before he goes home to his family.”

  Or back to the funny farm, I thought, but kept that possibility to myself.

  CHAPTER 13

  Carrying the plastic bag with the glass with J.D.’s prints, I left the Lassiter house. It was only 10:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m. Pacific time, too early to place a call to California to the warden at Pelican Bay prison to check out the inmate who’d written a letter with detailed threats to Wynona Wisdom. I considered taking the glass to Adler to have him run the prints, but between his damaged house and the current murder investigation, the poor guy didn’t need the added chore.

  Instead, I drove downtown to the sheriff’s substation, parked in what had been my old space when the building had been the Pelican Bay Police Department and went inside. I asked for Detective Keating at the dispatch desk. The dispatcher buzzed Keating on the intercom and told him he had a visitor.

  Within minutes, he was striding up the hall, looking as if he’d won the lottery.

  “Hey, Maggie, changed your mind about that dinner?”

  “You never give up, do you, Keating?”

  “That’s what makes me such an outstanding investigator.”

  “And humble, too.”

  The dispatcher, a thin young man with a bad case of acne, was watching us with interest.

  “Could we continue this conversation in your office?” I asked.

  Keating stood aside and waved me ahead of him and down the hall toward what had once been my office. The fact that the guy had squatting rights on my old territory was a major factor in the antagonism I felt toward him. But I wouldn’t coax a favor out of him with bad attitude, so I flashed a smile when he offered me a chair. He took the one behind his desk.

  “We really should get to know each other better,” he said.

  “Why? We have nothing in common, I’m already in a serious relationship and I’m at least fifteen years older than you.”

  His smile didn’t dim. “I like older women.”

  “An Oedipus complex?”

  He frowned briefly at what was obviously an unfamiliar reference. “We have lots in common.”

  “You and Oedipus?”

  “You and me.”

  I shook my head.

  “We’re both in law enforcement,” he said.

  I had to give him points for tenacity. “I was in law enforcement. I’m in private practice now.”

  “We worked well together on the Grove Spirit House case.”

  Bill and I had worked together well. Keating had botched it, but I didn’t want to antagonize him by saying so when I’d come begging. I tried to keep my tone reasonable. The last thing I wanted was to encourage his delusion that he and I had a future together.

  “You don’t know anything about me,” I said. “My taste in music, my hobbies, what I like to do in my free time.”

  “But finding out would be so much fun.”

  I took a deep breath and prayed for patience. Apparently, the only thing to discourage Casanova Keating’s amorous advances would be a two-by-four upside the head. But he couldn’t help me if he was unconscious. I cut to the chase.

  “I have clients,” I said, “two elderly ladies who have a homeless man doing odd jobs for them.”

  I left out the part about J.D.’s living in their toolshed. With that knowledge, Keating, in accordance with zoning ordinances, would be forced to evict J.D.

  “The guy has no memory, and I want to check him out, make sure he’s no danger to the women.”

  “You want me to talk to him?” Keating asked.

  “Been there, done that.” I handed him the plastic bag with the glass. “I want you to run his prints. If you can come up with a name and last known address, I’ll take it from there.”

  “So what’s in it for me?” His grin was lecherous.

  “The satisfaction that you’ve helped protect two lovely old ladies in your jurisdiction.”

  His expression sobered. Keating was a jerk, but even he saw the reasoning in my request. “I’ll see what I can do.” The leer returned. “Now, about that dinner?”

  “You know I’m about to be married. What’s the point?”

  “Maybe I’ll change your mind.”

  “And maybe several million illegal immigrants will stampede back over the border to Mexico.” With an ego like his, Ke
ating should run for office.

  “Okay, what say we call it quid pro quo?”

  I narrowed my eyes in distrust. “Call what quid pro quo?”

  “I run your John Doe’s prints. When I have the results, we’ll meet for dinner, two professionals getting together to share information.” He gave me his best Tom Selleck smile, which on Selleck would have been disarmingly attractive. On Keating, it gave me the willies.

  “What’s the harm?” he said.

  I started to protest. However, by agreeing to run the prints, Keating was doing me a favor. I could wait and ask Adler or even Mick Rafferty at the crime lab, but J.D. could go round the bend in the interim and harm the Lassiters, a possibility I wasn’t willing to risk.

  “On one condition,” I said.

  His grin was triumphant. “What’s that?”

  “I want these prints ASAP.”

  “You can count on it,” Keating said in a crooning tone. “The sooner I have them, the sooner I have you.”

  “Two professionals meeting for dinner,” I reminded him.

  He nodded. “But you never know where it might lead.”

  Probably to a black eye and a knee to his groin, but aloud I said, “Call my office, please, when you have the results.”

  “Why don’t you give me your cell number? I can reach you more quickly.”

  “Don’t have one,” I said with satisfaction and added avoiding annoying sheriff’s detectives as another reason not to cave in to pressure and acquire a cell phone.

  BACK AT THE CONDO, with Kimberly upstairs working on her computer in the spare room, I sat at the counter in my kitchen and placed a call to Pelican Bay State Prison, a super-max facility in northern California. Its housing of the state’s most hardened criminals had been well-documented by the media, including a Sixty Minutes segment that should have scared any potential lawbreaker with half a brain into going straight. I was groping in the dark to identify the writer of the threats against Wynona Wisdom, since the letter with the prison’s return address had been signed merely, “A Pelican Bay Inmate.”

  With the warden unavailable, my call was transferred to an assistant, who identified himself as Wayne Jackson. I told him who I was and explained the threatening letter.

  “Was it handwritten?” Jackson had a soft, cultured voice, at odds with his harsh environment.

  “Looks as if it came off a printer.”

  “Then it couldn’t have come from the prison,” Jackson said. “Our inmates don’t have access to typewriters, computers or word processors. And we have a staff of investigators who monitor all written communication in and out of the complex. They wouldn’t have allowed even a handwritten threat to slip past them.”

  “So you’re saying it’s a hoax.” I picked up my pen to cross this suspect off the list.

  “Not necessarily,” Jackson said. “Unfortunately, inmates have found a way to circumvent our censorship and communication blackout. They write on tiny slips of paper and wrap them in protective coverings. The missives, called ‘kites’ or ‘wilas,’ are given to visitors, who hide them in body cavities before leaving the prison.”

  Talk about a yuck factor. Delivering someone a message via body cavity—I shuddered at the options—wasn’t exactly caring enough to send the very best. “So an inmate could have transmitted instructions—” not to mention any number of diseases “—to someone on the outside to write and send a letter with the prison’s return address?”

  “It’s possible.” In his refined, educated tone, Jackson could have been discussing Proust instead of perversion. “Our prison population is obsessed with honor and respect within the various gangs. If Ms. Wisdom offended an incarcerated gang leader, members on the outside would be instructed to take care of her.”

  “Which gangs are you talking about?”

  Jackson’s sigh resonated through the handset. “Take your pick. We have the Nuestra Familia, Mexican Mafia, Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerillas and the Nazi Low Riders.”

  I shivered. “You’re talking bad dudes.”

  “The worst, any of whom wouldn’t hesitate at taking out a nationally syndicated columnist if he thought she’d shown him disrespect.”

  “Or the letter could be a hoax.”

  “There’s no way to know for sure, is there?” He sounded convivial and upbeat. Maybe he hadn’t been at the prison long.

  I thanked him for his help and hung up.

  Kimberly stood in the doorway, and I didn’t know how long she’d been listening.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Want some coffee?”

  She nodded. “I’m ready for a break.”

  I poured her a mug from the carafe warming on the coffeemaker’s hot plate. “You need to get out, breathe some fresh air. You’ve been cooped up in here for days.”

  She shuddered. “Not as long as somebody out there is gunning for me.”

  “We don’t know that. It’s still possible the shooter was after the nun or firing at a random target.”

  She drank her coffee and cocked her head, as if in thought. “What about my column left in the room?”

  “Coincidence. It was an entire section of newspaper, after all. With your advice syndicated in hundreds of major papers, the chance of your column being in any random section is high.”

  She stared at me, her wide eyes magnified by the lenses of her glasses. “You think I’m being paranoid.”

  I shook my head. “I think you’re being cautious. Adler and Porter are checking out the other threatening letters, and the Omaha police are interviewing Simon Anderson. Maybe something will turn up.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “You go back to your life. You can’t hide forever.”

  “Great,” she said with a bitter laugh, “and when someone finally kills me, I’ll be dead right.”

  Decades on the job had honed my instincts. Something about Sister Mary Theresa’s murder had me believing that she hadn’t been the target, nor that hers had been a random killing. Kimberly was somehow involved, but I couldn’t make the pieces fit.

  “Tell me about your staff,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?” She scooted onto the bar stool next to mine.

  “How long have they been with you?”

  “Steve and Cindy have worked for me since I first went into syndication. All the others have been there at least five years.”

  “And they’re all happy with their jobs?”

  “Happy and well compensated with good pay and great benefits. Steve, for example, is taking his four weeks’ vacation now. The others have similar employment packages. I believe in rewarding people for a job well done.”

  “Have you ever fired anyone?”

  “I’ve had people resign for various reasons. Going back to school for a degree, a husband with a job transfer, maternity leave. But I’ve never—”

  I could almost hear the synapses firing her memory.

  She frowned. “I forgot about Tonya McClain.”

  I scribbled the name on my suspect list. “You fired her?”

  “She was my fact-checker. Her job was to vet every column, make sure any facts I included were accurate.”

  “And she slipped up?”

  “No, she was actually the best I ever had. I’ve never found anyone as good.” Kimberly scratched the top of her head, digging her square white nails into her frizzy hair. “But she was…difficult.”

  “Difficult covers a lot of bases. Did she drink, miss work, raid the petty cash?”

  “No, Tonya would never break a rule. But once she settled into her job, she started giving me grief about every column I wrote. She’d question my advice and suggest alternatives. At first, I would teasingly remind her that the column was Ask Wynona Wisdom, not Ask Tonya McClain, hoping to make my point gently.”

  “It didn’t work?”

  “Some people don’t respond well to correction,” Kimberly said.

  I thought of Garrett Keatin
g. “So what happened?”

  “She became more and more confrontational. I didn’t need the stress, so I canned her.”

  “And she didn’t take it well?”

  Kimberly shrugged. “She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t threaten me. In fact, she apologized and said she couldn’t help being the way she was. Being in charge had been ingrained in her during her previous career.”

  “What did she do before working for you?”

  “She was a career officer in the Army.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “So…” I summarized my conversation with Kimberly to Adler and Porter at their desks at the Clearwater PD later that afternoon “…Ms. Wisdom fired an employee who’d been an Army officer.”

  “Weapons training is a given,” Porter said.

  “But Kimberly insisted the parting was amicable?” Adler asked.

  I nodded. “And I struck out trying to locate the Pelican Bay inmate who sent the threatening letter. I did, however, narrow the list of senders down to five major gangs operating in California and elsewhere. That’s only several thousand potential killers, give or take a few.”

  Adler sighed, tossed his pencil onto his desktop and laced his fingers behind his head. “This is a wild goose chase. Except for the ex-boyfriend, Simon Anderson, and Tonya McClain, we have no named suspects.”

  “Did the crime lab lift any usable prints from the hotel room?” I asked.

  Porter shook his head. “We’re spinning our wheels. We don’t even know for sure that anyone’s really after Wynona Wisdom.”

  “Until he makes another attempt,” I said.

  “Which,” Adler pointed out, “he’s not likely to do, since he doesn’t know where she is.”

  “And she’s still afraid to go home,” I said.

  The phone on Adler’s desk rang, and he answered. He listened for several minutes, thanked the caller and hung up.

  “That was a detective with the Omaha police department,” he said. “They’ve located Kimberly’s old boyfriend. Simon Anderson has been in Monte Carlo for the past three weeks. He gave the name of a prominent Omaha socialite he’s traveling with as his alibi.”