Death by Marriage

by Blair Bancroft

  Thud. I came back to earth, forced to explain to Boone that I had to work from sun-up to well after the barbecue closed down on Tuesday. I did my best to project a nice mix of sincere regret and encouragement, even skating close to all is forgiven. I guess the Chief got the message, because we settled for pizza and beer. Tonight. Eureka! Nothing like multi-tasking. I could take another step toward discovering if Boone Talbot should be allowed to inch his way into my life and at the same time pump him about the latest death. And, of course, try to weasel an update on Martin’s case. As I hung up the phone, I smiled for the first time since Alyce dropped her little bomb about Scott.

  Maybe I could even do some crisis prevention on Scott’s behalf.

  And maybe I’d better keep my mouth shut and hope Scott’s acquaintance with Vanessa Kellerman never came to light.

  Gwyn Halliday in la-la land again. Whatever was happening in Golden Beach was blowing up into a storm, and I needed to be prepared for the worst. With Martin the catalyst and Letty, Boone, and Chad added to the mix, I’d cracked my self-imposed cocoon. And that, inevitably, led to breaking out of my confined role as Costume Party Pollyanna and digging my toes into a nastier reality than I was prepared to face.

  But there was no going back. No crawling into the cozy security of my costume fantasy world. Too much was at stake. I had to keep going. For Scott. For Martin. For the poor old man I never knew. For Letty, who was somehow involved in all this. Or would be, I was certain of it.

  But if anyone asked me why, I’d be stuck for an answer. Gwyn Halliday—tongue-tied, flying blind on the intuition and imagination express.

  Date. Panic time. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been on a date, or three or four, since I limped home from New York, but this was the first time I’d felt excited instead of awkward and uneasy. The first time my mother or Crystal hadn’t pushed me into it. The first time I was so nervous I was tempted to crawl under my bedcovers and claim I’d just come down with the flu.

  Instead, I pulled on a pair of black jeans that fit like a second skin, then tried on nearly every top in my wardrobe. Too loose, too tight, too much cleavage. Too dark, too bright, too dressy. I settled for the simple contrast of a white, modestly V-necked cotton knit peeking out from under my fringed and hand-embroidered black jeans jacket, one of my own creations. There! My full-length mirror reflected Gwyn Halliday, the gal with a costume appropriate for all occasions, including pizza and beer on a Sunday night in Golden Beach, Florida.

  Armor, that’s what it was. Fortunately, I was pretty certain Boone Talbot wasn’t one of those guys who jumped a girl on a first date. I was definitely ready to add him to my short list of friends, but in spite of my hormones turning somersaults at the sound of his voice, I was a long way from wanting a lover.

  Or maybe not . . .

  Later that night, as Boone left me on my doorstep after a kiss that could only be described as chaste, I decided I must still be broadcasting Hands off on all channels. I’d have to work on that.

  As I got ready for bed, I made myself shift from the lack of sizzle in Boone’s kiss and focus on what I’d learned on my date with the Chief of Police. Boone Talbot was a good cop, so the answer was, not much. Yes, Virginia Mills was a person of interest in Basil Janecek’s death. No, they hadn’t found her yet.

  Martin Kellerman? Boone shook his head, his blue eyes reflecting disappointment that I was dumb enough, or had nerve enough, to continue asking questions about on-going investigations.

  Letty’s problems? Con artists were everywhere, Boone said, and seniors were particularly vulnerable. Con artists were slippery, usually gone on the wind before the police knew a crime had been committed. Crystal and I needed to do all we could to steer Letty away from danger.

  After that . . . for someone who grew up fifteen hundred miles from an ocean, Boone Talbot did a remarkable imitation of a clam.

  But the pizza was good. So was the beer, and the company, once I stopped playing interrogator, was even better. I liked the downhome cop from Nebraska. Integrity, good manners, and a pleasing personality wrapped in an attractive package, with the tough alter ego of Number One Cop hovering just out of sight—what more could a woman ask for?

  A kiss that didn’t feel like he thought his lips were touching a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse?

  I’d brought it on myself. Celibacy is a state of mind that can’t be cracked in a single date.

  As I pulled my nightgown over my head, I remembered something else. Boone had warned me to be sure our doors were locked at all times. And to advise my neighbors to do the same. There had been an unusual rash of house break-ins over the past few months, many in broad daylight. Some with the owners distracted by talking to one member of the gang while others raided the house. The losses were mostly jewelry, wallets, small appliances, and an occasional painting. It was the Season, of course, and thieves as well as con artists followed the annual migration south—sometimes whole extended families of them, Boone had added, but records showed Golden Beach had never before experienced so many thefts in so short a time.

  He was right. The few burglaries we had in Golden Beach were at businesses; on rare occasions, a bank. Not houses. Not in our little corner of paradise. Could the thefts have any connection to . . .

  Stop! Don’t even think it. But I made a note to go to the library and do some research. I needed to know more about con artists and their scams, and I might as well see if I could find something on a different kind of snowbird Crystal had mentioned—gangs of thieves who tracked their prey south, indulging themselves in the Florida sun, shoulder to shoulder with their unsuspecting victims.

  I slid into bed, closed my eyes. Okay, so I should have grabbed the man and kissed him back. He was asking for encouragement, and what he got was ice.

  Maybe, just maybe, I’d do better next time.

  The week between Christmas and New Years was a heyday for boaters, so Scott would be “at sea” during the hours of the Hospital Auxiliary’s Fund-raiser. Crystal had volunteered to keep DreamWear open so the “kids,” our part-time helpers Tim and Jessie, could enjoy the barbecue. Smart gal. She could sit on the wicker stool behind the counter in air-conditioned peace and quiet while I set up serving tables, guided the pony man and his four-footed companions to their designated area, and soothed the nerves of craft artists and bake sale ladies who thought their booths weren’t close enough to the food vendors and games.

  At the roar of a small plane taking off from a runway only a hundred yards away, I paused and watched the Cessna soar into the air over the Gulf, then turn slowly north, heading toward Sarasota and Tampa. The site of the barbecue was a large grassy area just south of the airport, with the Gulf of Mexico shining blue-green a half mile to the west. Once again I was reminded how fortunate I was to be part of paradise.

  The tantalizing odor of roast pork caught my attention, drifting from the area where Scott’s contributions to the barbecue turned slowly on their spits. I paused to sniff, my taste buds salivating. I’d have to be sure to pack up a meal for Scott, but I had no intention of giving it to him until he gave me a straight story about Vanessa Kellerman.

  I looked toward the Gulf, where the morning sun tipped incoming waves with sparks of fire and wondered how he was doing. Probably just sitting at the marina, waiting for a call. A bit early in the day for emergencies. Boaters hadn’t yet had time to run out of gas or do something stupid because they’d been drinking all day.

  “Really, Gwyn,” barked a voice to my right. “Where’s the clean-up crew? The smell from those animals is nauseating.”

  The marvelous odors wafting from the open-pit barbecue evaporated as I turned toward Vanessa Kellerman. I had to give her credit—she’d been on site since eight o’clock and had actually been helpful. But where I smelled roasting wild boar, she smelled manure.

  I smiled, attempting to minimize her complaint. “Can’t have a good-old country picnic without animals,” I said. “It’s part of the fun.”

 
“I don’t mind the ponies,” she sputtered, “but they’ve got at least a dozen horses over there, and bulls.”

  “Hard to have a mini-rodeo without them.”

  “Well, it smells disgusting!”

  I stared at her blonde perfection, nicely displayed in tailored turquoise slacks and a striped knit top that hugged every curve. She’d been working for nearly two hours and not a hair out of place, while I undoubtedly looked the way I felt—like I’d set up the entire event on my own. Which was totally untrue, and I knew it. Just because I was Mom’s primary “go to” person . . .

  “Vanessa . . .” I took a deep breath, reminding myself she was a recent widow. I thought of the good cause our fund-raiser represented, thought of Martin, considered my family responsibility to Mom. “Vanessa, I’ll go check with the head of clean-up right away. Maybe they’re off to a slow start because we don’t open for another twenty minutes. Why don’t you tell Jo you’d like to stick to assignments away from the animals. Tell her you’re allergic.”

  Still looking sour, Vanessa gave a brisk nod. “Fine. I’ll do that.” And she stalked away.

  Later, when the crowds came pouring in, all the hassles seemed worth it. Families pushed strollers across the rough grass, teens in bunches swaggered or giggled according to their sex. Some seniors strode in briskly, while others needed canes or walkers. Snowbirds and holiday visitors were clearly delineated by shorts and summer shirts, something no native Floridian would consider wearing in December. And almost all, I noted, paid a visit to the large tent where shells and sharks’ teeth were exhibited. Golden Beach is the sharks’ tooth capital of the world, the age of the black or brown petrified teeth estimated at seven to eleven million years.

  When my parents were young, it was possible to find sharks’ teeth three to five inches long while walking the beach. Now, with the population explosion, it was becoming harder and harder to find even small teeth. Shell and sharks’ teeth devotees could be seen patrolling the beaches at dawn after every storm, hoping for a good find. So it wasn’t surprising that even locals wanted to see the tooth display. Their children had probably never seen a shark’s tooth bigger than half an inch. And large shells had become equally as scarce.

  I was coming back from a stint of lifting kids onto ponies when a striking brunette waved to me. Sherry Lambert. Sherry runs the rental branch of Wallace Realty and does a fine job of it, while still managing to sell real estate at a brisk pace. But Scott’s hints about Jeb, Vanessa, and Sherry flooded through my head in a swirling kaleidoscope of unwanted images. I managed a smile and waved back. Thank goodness we were separated by thirty feet of milling fair-goers.

  Boone Talbot, in full uniform, appeared while I was dishing up barbecued beans. Perhaps my enthusiastic description of the planned events and the expected size of the crowd had made him realize the Fund-raiser was a good place for a new police chief to practice Meet and Greet. Or maybe he’d planned to be on hand all along, and his invitation to me had been an afterthought.

  Or maybe he really liked me. The Chief grabbed a paper plate and joined the food line. His eyes flashed warmly as I added beans to his plate, for once in my life feeling amazingly domestic. But would I want to feed the man every day for the rest of my life?

  More than startled by the thought, I blinked, and hastened to add beans to the plate of the next person in line.

  By mid-afternoon I was too tired to think about Boone Talbot or wonder if Jeb had been practicing ménage à trois with Vanessa and Sherry. Mom’s voice was beginning to grate. Gwyn, take this to . . . Gwynie, that jewelry designer—what’s his name?—needs fives and ones. Gwyn, there’s some kind of dispute over in games. See what you can do . . .

  I wanted to cruise around, just look a bit, maybe take a peek at the rodeo. Maybe even ride a horse. Hadn’t done that in an age. Not since Central Park.

  I was helping a mother convince her hysterical three-year-old daughter that the pony wasn’t going to bite her when my cellphone rang. Again.

  “Gwyn!” Mom barked. I winced, but this time was different. “Come on back,” she said. “There are people here to see you.”

  I rushed back to the Administration Tent and found Letty, accompanied by two fine specimens of manhood, father and son. Marshall and Eric Johnson. Breathless as I was, I gave them my best sharp perusal. I had to admit they were easy to look at. Handsome devils, the both of them. Marshall was medium height, maybe five-nine or ten; Eric, a couple of inches taller. Both had thick chestnut brown hair, wavy, and neatly combed. Marshall’s had the distinguishing gray above the ears that added that certain something to a man who would never see fifty again. Maybe even sixty. Although dressed in Florida casual—Marshall in khakis and Eric in jeans, each topped by a designer polo shirt—they looked as if they could be dropped into any boardroom from Miami to New York and adapt with ease, thank you very much. Their matching gray eyes reflected both amiability and supreme confidence. Their firm handshakes and direct eye contact were right out of the executive handbook.

  Wow! No wonder Letty was flattered by their attention.

  The question was, why were they hanging out with Letitia Van Ryn? I wanted to think it was altruism, but, come on, that just wasn’t realistic. Unless being kind to little old ladies was some kind of penance dictated by their pastor, or maybe their parole officer, for previous misdeeds.

  You’re fantasizing again, Gwyn. Not smart.

  But surely that idea was more fair than supposing two men who had been kind to Letty were actually con artists out to separate her from her money.

  We managed about five minutes of conversation, during which Marshall and Eric Johnson displayed superior social skills and excellent manners, before Mom had me off and running again. A dispute between buyer and seller at our resident wood sculptor’s table. I made my apologies to Letty and her companions and dashed off, with visions of wooden angels and dolphins flying through the air, hurtling toward someone’s head, falling on a baby in a stroller. I increased my speed.

  Talk about a tempest in a tea cup. The buyer had just forked over two thousand seven hundred dollars for a heavy five-foot free-form I wouldn’t have had as a gift. On second look, I decided it might be considered phallic, if seen from the right angle. The sculpture was definitely proof that art is subjective, beauty in the eye of the beholder.

  The problem was, the buyer wanted to bring his car right up to the booth and load the art work immediately, while the sculptor considered the work his pièce de resistance and wanted the buyer to wait until the barbecue was over and the crowds dispersed. Not to mention that the rules of the event prohibited cars outside the parking lot.

  “We drove all the way up from Naples,” the buyer, a towering country club type, said to me, while his attractive honey-headed wife hovered beside him. “A two-hundred mile round trip. It’s time to head home. You going to carry that thing all the way to the parking lot, young lady? I don’t think so. So what’re you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” said an authoritative voice from behind me. Just one word, but I recognized the voice. The cavalry had arrived. Mom must have called Boone Talbot too.

  The Chief introduced himself. The couple reciprocated. They were John and Evie Baird.

  “We were in town on business,” Baird said, “and just stopped by the fair on our way out of town.”

  “My former husband specified a few things that were to be mine after his death,” Mrs. Baird explained softly. “We came here today to pick them up. Now I’m tired,” she added. “I just want to go home.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Boone said. “Was his death recent?”

  “Recent and horrible,” she said. “I imagine you know about it. Martin Kellerman.”

  “You were married to Martin?” I blurted out. Oh. My. God. Martin’s widow, ex-girlfriend, and ex-wife were all here. At the same time.

  “For many years.” Evie Baird sighed. “John”—she looked up adoringly to her giant of a husband—“a
nd Martin were business partners. Very successful. Both were able to retire early.” She paused, searching for words. I noticed I wasn’t the only one gaping at her. Even Boone looked stunned by this unexpected disclosure. “Martin was a genius at business,” she said at last, “but we had . . . problems. John was kind enough to pick up the pieces.”

  Now there was a statement that could cover a multitude of sins.

  “I’m sorry to ask,” Boone said, “but I really need to talk to you before you leave town. I was about to suggest we bring a golf cart around to the back of the booth to load up the sculpture, so why don’t we do that, then maybe you’ll both spare me a moment or two to talk about Martin.”

  The Bairds agreed, if reluctantly. The sculptor had backed off his high horse the moment he saw Boone’s uniform. If he ever again wanted a booth at a craft fair in Golden Beach, he knew enough not to piss off the Chief of Police.

  I watched Boone and the sculptor load the heavy, possibly phallic, sculpture into the golf cart. Heroically, I refrained from trying to follow them to the Bairds’ car and the upcoming interview. If only I could shape-shift and be one of Florida’s ubiquitous little lizards, sunning myself on the hood of the Bairds’ car. I mean, Boone was bound to learn something valuable about Martin’s past. Things I wanted to know. I couldn’t see Martin as an abusive husband, but I’d been way wrong about men before. And not just in the past. Chad Yarnell was a shining example. Or maybe the business partners had had a falling out, something serious enough, or lucrative enough, to spawn murder. Maybe Baird was set to inherit Martin’s share of the company . . .

  That did it! Mentally shrinking myself to the size of a lizard—I could have used some of Crystal’s smoke and mirrors—I slunk after Boone and the Bairds. I mean, with all those SUVs and pick-ups in the parking area, there ought to be something to hide behind, right?