Storm Season

by Charlotte Douglas

  It looked as if Keating had received an A in Seduction 101. Make that a B+, points lost for the missing gypsy violinist.

  The maître d’ pulled out my chair, seated me and flicked a heavy linen napkin onto my lap. He handed us each a leather-bound menu. Then the waiter, hovering nearby, stepped forward to open the champagne.

  “Just water for me,” I said.

  Keating’s face fell. “But, Maggie, this is a celebration.”

  “This is business. And alcohol reacts with my medication.” I’d mixed Benadryl with a vodka tonic once and, to my mother’s horror, had fallen asleep at the table at the Pelican Bay Yacht Club. With Keating, I needed my wits about me.

  “Medication?” he said. “You’re not ill?”

  My hives were none of his business, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to yank his chain. “The doctor says I’m no threat to anyone as long as I take my pills.”

  The waiter filled my water glass and Keating’s champagne flute.

  “I’m ready to order,” I said. “I’ll have the surf and turf and a Greek salad.”

  Keating’s pained expression as he ordered his steak rare told me events were moving too fast for him.

  The waiter left, and Keating raised his glass and fixed me with a heated stare. “To us.”

  I lifted my water goblet. “To us finding J.D.’s family.”

  I shifted my gaze to the manila envelope by his plate. “I can read that while we wait for our food.”

  As if afraid I’d make a lunge for it, he placed his hand on the envelope. “Why don’t we talk instead?”

  “About what?”

  “About you.” He smiled, slow and sexy, and his voice was a caress. “I want to know everything about you.”

  I bit back a sharp reply. Keating, after all, was doing me a favor by running J.D.’s prints and buying dinner. I tried to be nice. “There’s nothing to know. I was a cop, now I’m a P.I. and about to be married to a man I’ve loved for years.”

  “And nothing will change your mind?”

  I shook my head. “So you might as well give up.”

  “It’s against my nature.”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  He shrugged.

  A guy as handsome as Keating was probably used to women who fell all over him. Maybe only the ones who didn’t intrigued him. “Seems to me you’re a man who likes the chase but loses interest after he’s made the catch.”

  His smile faded. Apparently, I’d hit too close to home.

  “You a shrink as well as a P.I.?” he asked.

  I shook my head and smiled to soften my words. “But in our business, we have to know how to read people.”

  “I’m not saying you’re right.”

  “I’ve been wrong before.” But this time I didn’t think so. I was pretty sure I had Keating pegged. When he quickly abandoned his seduction and got down to business, I was certain.

  “Your John Doe’s ex-military.” He handed me the envelope. “And I did some more snooping for you. It’s all in there.”

  I opened the flap and pulled out two sheets of paper. The top sheet contained a photo of a much younger J.D. in a Marine uniform. I scanned the info.

  “Served in Vietnam,” I said. “Decorated for valor.”

  “His name is Thomas Burke.”

  “Any priors?”

  Keating shook his head. “According to National Crime Information Center, his record is clean. I ran his name through the Department of Motor Vehicles in New York, his home state. The results are there.”

  I flipped the page and discovered another more recent photo on a copy of a New York driver’s license. J.D. was wearing a clerical collar. The Lassiter sisters’ tenant was a priest.

  CHAPTER 17

  The next morning Darcy brought hot drinks and glazed doughnuts from the bookstore coffee bar downstairs and placed them on my desk. Taking her cup of green tea and a pastry, she sat across from me. At her feet, Roger watched for errant crumbs.

  “You rid of that woman yet?” she asked.

  “Which one?”

  “The one living in your house.”

  “Which house?”

  She shook her head. “Girl, your life is a mess. A freaked-out advice slinger and a drunken ex-wife, both camping out on your various doorsteps.”

  I reached for my coffee. “Good reason to leave town this weekend. Bill and I are going on a cruise.”

  “’Bout time you two spent some quality time together. I hear you had dinner last night with Deputy Do-Right.”

  “You heard? How?”

  “I have my sources.”

  I glanced at my desktop and saw “Keating, 7:00 p.m., Sophia’s” penciled on my day planner. Darcy’s source was reading my calendar. “You bucking for a promotion from administrative assistant to investigator?”

  “I’m just wondering what the hell is going on. Bill with his ex-wife, you going out with Keating. When are things getting back to normal around here?”

  “Depends on what you call normal.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said in a huff. “You and Bill against the world, like it’s always been.”

  “Then things are back to normal,” I said.

  “Uh-uh.” Darcy gave me a disgusted look. “Not as long as that she-devil is staking a claim on your house and your man and you’re flirting with the enemy.”

  She was going to keep at me until I explained. Knowing her nosiness grew out of concern, I relented. “Bill and I are telling Trish this afternoon that we’re putting her on a plane to her daughter’s in Seattle. And Keating insisted I have dinner with him to give me the identity of the Lassiter sisters’ John Doe.”

  Darcy cocked an eyebrow. “He coulda told you over the phone.”

  “Once he exhausted his God’s-gift-to-women routine without effect, dinner wasn’t so bad. His overblown ego covers a lot of insecurity.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now I need you to find me the phone number of diocese headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Apparently, they’re missing a priest.”

  Darcy wrinkled her brow. “Your John Doe’s a priest, and you’re working on the murder of a nun? Isn’t that a coincidence?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe J.D. was an assassin sent by Opus Dei to knock off the sister.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been reading too many Dan Brown books. More likely God’s trying to tell me something.”

  Darcy gave Roger her last crumb of doughnut and pushed to her feet. “Just don’t make Him come down here.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, I pulled into the Lassiter driveway. No one answered when I knocked at the front door, but I could hear sounds of tapping coming from the backyard. I walked around the house through the carport and spotted J.D., removing the broken pane from the shed window.

  His T-shirt, damp with sweat, stuck to his skin, and his legs and arms, exposed by cutoffs and short sleeves, were tanned. He greeted me with a warm smile. “You’re a persistent woman, Maggie Skerritt. But I’m not giving you my fingerprints.”

  “Persistence pays off, Father Tom.”

  He set aside the broken shards of glass and stared. “Father Tom?”

  “I’ve found out who you are.”

  Looking frightened, he shook his head. “Don’t tell me.”

  “I think you want to know. You’ve got a job to do.”

  With a sigh, he motioned toward the back porch. “It’s cooler in the shade.”

  I followed him onto the porch and took a seat on an old metal glider, rusty and in need of paint. He sat across from me in an aluminum lawn chair with nylon webbing. He had the look of a man facing sentencing. Or execution.

  “Your dreams of blood and death,” I said, “are flashbacks from Vietnam. You were a Marine lieutenant.” I handed him the first page from Keating’s envelope. “You were awarded the Purple Heart and Silver Star.”

  He took the page, read through it and handed it back to me. “That man is a stranger. Nothing
there seems familiar.”

  “I spoke with your bishop this morning. He knows your story. When you returned from the war, your spirit was broken. You were disillusioned. In a search for meaning, you entered seminary and became a priest. You’ve been a fine priest ever since.”

  “That’s why you called me Father Tom.” He shook his head. “Why can’t I remember?”

  “That’s what we want to find out. The bishop faxed me copies of your medical insurance. You need to see a neurologist.”

  He flashed a thin smile. “Have my head examined?”

  I nodded.

  “I must have fallen on the trail and hit my head. That’s why I can’t remember.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “After speaking with the bishop, I talked with the manager of the hotel on Pelican Beach where you were staying on vacation in July. He remembers you. The night before you vacated your room, you won $10,000 on a casino cruise. You apparently have a flair for poker.”

  Recognition flickered in his eyes. “I played poker with the guys in Nam. I’m beginning to remember.”

  “According to the manager, the next day you rented a bike for a ride on the trail. He never saw you again.”

  “Did they call the police when I didn’t return for the things in my room?”

  “But you did return.”

  He raised his gray eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t remember.”

  “Because it wasn’t you. From what I’ve been able to piece together, someone who knew you’d won big on the cruise followed you on the trail. You were attacked, knocked out and robbed.”

  “But surely I wouldn’t have carried all that money on me.”

  “You didn’t. The manager said you’d locked it in the hotel safe before you left to go biking.”

  “Then the money’s still there?”

  I shook my head. “Whoever robbed you stole your ID and room key. He must have gone back to the hotel, taken your clothes and other belongings and requested the money from the safe.”

  “But if the manager knew me, he wouldn’t have given the money to a stranger.”

  “The assistant manager didn’t know you. When your assailant, dressed in your clerical collar and carrying your room key, checked out, she gave him the money he requested.”

  “So no one at the hotel knew I was missing?”

  “Not until the Rochester police contacted them a week later. The bishop called them after talking to the airlines. Someone using your identification papers boarded in Tampa for the flight to Rochester. The bishop thought you’d returned to the city and then disappeared. That’s why no one was looking for you down here. The thief must have used your plane ticket to get out of town. For all we know, he could be anywhere now, even Canada.”

  “And the bishop…” J.D. hesitated. “Did he really say I was a good priest?”

  “The best. That’s why he’s anxious to have you back. Your entire parish has missed you. And your family.”

  “Family?”

  “You have a twin sister, Emily.”

  “Emily.” His voice caressed the name and another flicker of remembrance lit his eyes.

  “And you have children and grandchildren,” I said.

  His eyes widened with shock. “But I’m a priest.”

  “You married while you were in college and had two children. Your wife divorced you while you were in Vietnam. But you’ve kept in touch with your children and their families. They’re anxious to see you.”

  Tears misted his eyes. “And I thought I was all alone.”

  “Far from it.” I pulled a slip of paper from my pocket. “Here’s the name and number of a neurologist at Pelican Bay Hospital. He treated my mother last spring. Tell his office I referred you and make an appointment, okay?”

  “But what about home?”

  “If Dr. Katz says you’re in shape to fly, we’ll put you on the next plane to Rochester.”

  He sat back in his chair and looked stunned. “I don’t know what to say. Except thank you.”

  I’d almost forgotten. I dug into my other pocket. “Here’s the name and address of the hotel in town where the bishop has arranged for you to stay for now. He’s overnighting funds and your ticket home.”

  “That takes care of everything,” J.D. said, then frowned. “Except the Lassiter sisters. Who will take care of them?”

  “The Moore family next door,” I said, “and I’ll check on Violet and Bessie often.”

  He nodded, obviously comfortable with my assessment. “You’re a good woman, Maggie. And not bad as a detective, either.”

  CHAPTER 18

  On his boat, Bill made sandwiches for lunch, and I told him the saga of Father Tom.

  “Too bad the trail’s gone cold on his assailant,” Bill said. “I’d love to see that guy thrown behind bars.”

  I sat at the booth in the galley, and Bill handed me a plate with a king-size sandwich, my favorite, sliced turkey with romaine.

  “Not much chance of catching him now,” I said. “The surveillance tapes at the hotel have been erased, the room’s been cleaned a hundred times and Father Tom had only cash, no credit cards to trace.”

  “So…” Bill sat across from me and passed a bag of potato chips. “That’s one mystery solved. Now if we can find Sister Mary Theresa’s killer, we’ll be batting a thousand.”

  I swallowed a bite of turkey on whole wheat. “He, or she, is as far off the radar as Father Tom’s assailant. No more similar shootings have been reported anywhere in the country. And, according to security at the gate at Kimberly’s condo, no one’s been asking for her and no sign of anyone hanging around as if to get a look.”

  Bill munched chips, his expression thoughtful. “Could be the shooter hasn’t worked up the nerve to hit again. Or is simply waiting for another target of opportunity.”

  “You don’t think someone’s specifically after Kim?”

  “Who would it be? The ex-fiancé is out of the country.”

  “What about Tonya McClain?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t see it. She was completely open about working for Kim when I interviewed her.”

  “Not exactly. She didn’t bother to mention her unrequited love.”

  “Maybe she’s over it,” he said. “It’s been a few years, after all.”

  I wasn’t so easily convinced. “Okay, maybe it’s not Tonya. But that fact doesn’t rule out potentially hundreds of wacko readers whom Wynona Wisdom has ticked off over the years. We’ve only scratched the surface on those nutcases.”

  “So how long does the poor girl stay in hiding?” he asked. “That’s no way to live.”

  I reached across the table with my napkin and removed a smear of mayonnaise from Bill’s chin. “I need more time. I can’t get over the feeling that I’m missing something. Maybe with other distractions out of the way, I’ll be able to figure out what it is.”

  Bill smiled, kick-starting my pulse rate. “Distractions? Like Trish? Or maybe Keating?”

  “Keating?” I grimaced. I’d had my fill of the egotistical sheriff’s detective. “I was thinking of Father Tom but, now that you mention your ex, we need a plan to convince her to get out of our house.”

  “Evictions are always difficult,” he said with a scowl. “We had to oversee our share of them in the good old days as patrol officers, didn’t we?”

  I nodded, remembering. “Kicking out deadbeats was satisfying. It was the families down on their luck who broke my heart.”

  “You could definitely say Trish is down on her luck,” he said with compassion.

  I could see his sympathy for his ex-wife building and feared he might lose his resolve to send her away. “Sometimes we create our own luck. Trish has to take control of her life and stop being dependent on others.”

  “A hard lesson to learn at any stage of life, but harder still at sixty.”

  I wasn’t totally heartless. I felt sorry for Trish and her situation, but I also knew that pity wasn’t the answer to her
problem. Maybe by finally hitting bottom, she’d realize she needed major changes in her life. If not, nothing Bill nor I could do would help. “You made her plane reservations?”

  “She leaves Tampa this evening at seven. I couldn’t get a through flight. She’ll have to change planes in Chicago.”

  “And Melanie’s expecting her?”

  He made a face. “I spent an hour on the phone with her this morning. I’m ashamed how little empathy my daughter has for her own mother. But I did convince Melanie to meet the plane. I left it up to her whether she wants to check Trish into rehab. My guess is she’ll try, if for no other reason than to relieve herself of the responsibility.”

  I eyed Bill carefully. “You agreed to cover the costs, didn’t you?”

  His blue eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “One, because Trish can’t afford it. Two, because Melanie is too selfish to volunteer and three, because I know you.”

  “You don’t think I should?”

  I rose from my side of the booth and slid onto the cushion next to him. “I think you’re the best person I’ve ever known. And I’m sure I don’t deserve you.”

  He slid his arms around me. “I believed my world had fallen apart all those years ago when Trish left me. Now, the more I’m around her, the more I thank my lucky stars that I have you.”

  His kiss tasted of salt and mayonnaise, and I was enjoying every minute of it until the distinctive ring of his cell phone interrupted our pleasure.

  “Let it go,” I whispered against his lips.

  He hesitated. “It might be important.”

  I sighed and broke away. “One day when you’re not looking, I’m going to throw that pesky thing overboard.”

  He pulled the phone from the carrier on his belt and checked the caller ID. “It’s coming from the phone at our house.”

  “Trish. I should have known. She’s been insinuating herself into our lives for too long now.”

  He flipped the phone open, and I could hear Trish screaming from where I sat.

  “He’s going to kill me!” Clear and unslurred, her words were filled with spine-tingling panic that would have been hard to fake.