The look of longing on Bill’s face was almost painful to witness because I knew what he was thinking. Bill had been married when I’d first met him, and his only child, a daughter, had been six years old. Shortly after I’d saved his life during a domestic call, his wife Trish had filed for divorce, no longer able to endure the fears of every police officer’s spouse, that someday her husband would end his shift in a body bag. She’d been granted primary custody of their daughter Melanie, and they had moved to Seattle. Bill had tried to keep in touch with his daughter, but thousands of miles and her eventual shift of loyalties to her new stepdad had driven a wedge between them.
Melanie had eventually broken all contact with her father, and although now married with a family of her own, she’d never encouraged Bill to visit his granddaughters.
It was a crying shame. Bill would have made the world’s best granddad. I could tell, just watching him with Jessica.
“Before I forget,” Adler said, “I have something for you.”
He went to a desk beside the fireplace and removed a folder from the top drawer. “Got some hits on your Willard Ashton.”
“You’re a better man than me.” Bill shifted his attention momentarily from Jessica. “I struck out.”
“Not your fault.” Adler handed me the folder. “Apparently the sheriff’s office did, too, at first. So Doc Cline had to fingerprint the body to make the identification. Once the SO matched the prints in AFIS, aliases started popping up like warts on a frog.”
I took the folder, opened it and studied the printouts. A color photo of Willard Ashton stared back at me from the first page, not the bald Mr. Clean I’d met, but a younger man with wavy black hair. The name under the mug shot was Richard Cooper with an address in Fort White, Florida. A scan of the three-year-old incident report indicated he’d been charged with assault after a dustup with one of his former clients at River Spirit House, located on the Sante Fe River outside of Fort White.
Bill placed Jessica in her playpen, and I handed him that report and went on to the next. It contained a photo of an even younger Ashton, this one named James Bessemer, with blond hair. The charge, filed in Walhalla, South Carolina, in relation to Bessemer’s retreat at Mountain Spirit House, included a claim by a local resident that she’d been sexually molested. Authorities, unable to resolve the he-said/she-said, dilemma, had released Bessemer.
The last report showed a mug shot of a young man in his late teens, arrested for a series of petty crimes in Nashville, Tennessee. His name was Ryan Wayne and he’d been sentenced to five years in state prison for car theft. An attached sheet indicated he hadn’t been a model prisoner and had been disciplined for several altercations with his fellow inmates. Apparently the young Ashton hadn’t yet learned the peace and tranquillity of oneness with the Universal Spirit.
So Willard Ashton’s real name was Ryan Wayne, but he’d also used Richard Cooper and James Bessemer as aliases when he’d moved his scam to new locations.
Bill finished reading the last sheet. “Looks like there’s no shortage of people with motive to kill Ashton. He left a trail of discontent that goes back almost two decades.”
I nodded. “We have our work cut out for us.”
Adler sprang to his feet from his recliner by the fireplace. “The chicken should be ready.”
He went out to the grill, and Sharon set serving bowls on the pine table in the eat-in kitchen. “Come and get it, guys.”
Later, finished with my meal, I watched Adler, who’d consumed half a large chicken, a mountain of potato salad and several crusty rolls, dig into a man-sized slice of lemon meringue pie. In almost every memory I had of him as my partner, he’d been eating something. How he kept his fighting trim with that appetite, I couldn’t figure. Grocery bills had probably bankrupted his family when Adler had gone through his growth spurts as a teen.
I added two spoons of sugar to my coffee. “Thanks for Ashton’s rap sheets,” I said to Adler. “We’d hit a dead end in our investigation, and the sheriff’s office won’t give up anything yet.”
“Who’s their detective on the case?” Adler asked.
“Guy named Garrett Keating,” Bill said. “You know him?”
Adler shook his head. “Must be new to the SO. They’ve filled a lot of vacancies recently, created by retirements. If he’s new, my guess is he’ll be hard-nosed and play everything strictly by the book until he’s more familiar with the job.” He passed his plate to Sharon, who loaded it with another slice of pie.
“Anyone else want more?” she asked.
“No thanks,” Bill said, “but it was delicious, as always.”
I shook my head.
“Anything more I can do to help?” Adler asked before digging into his second dessert.
Now seemed as good a time as any to bring up the Burns-Baker bash. I looked to Bill, and he nodded.
“Want to earn some overtime?” I said.
I caught Sharon’s frown out of the corner of my eye and knew what she was thinking. Adler’s regular job in homicide kept him working long hours, so he had little time to spend with his family.
“This is only one evening,” I explained quickly, “and the pay’s good.”
I quoted the rate, and Adler whistled. “That is good, and we could use some extra funds, what with the new baby and all.”
“Is it dangerous?” Sharon asked.
“Security for a wedding reception,” Bill explained.
Sharon looked puzzled. “Who’s getting married, the child of a Mafia boss?”
I shook my head. “Kevin Baker and Linda Burns.”
Adler groaned. “Of Pineland Circle?”
“You remember them, of course.”
“Any officer who’s patrolled Pelican Bay remembers them,” Adler said. “I can’t believe those families will be joined by marriage. No wonder you need security for the reception.”
“It’s at Sophia’s the last Saturday of the month,” I said. “And Antonio wants to make sure there’s no trouble.”
Adler grinned. “I understand now why you’re paying so much. Hazardous duty.”
“How hazardous?” Sharon insisted.
“Probably more boring than hazardous,” I said. “The kids in both families are grown now. And their mothers insist their broods will be on their best behavior for the happy couple’s sake.”
Adler cast a glance at Sharon before looking back at me. “I’ll check my schedule and let you know Monday.”
“Fine,” Bill said. “Abe Mackley’s retired from the Tampa PD. We thought we’d ask him to join us, too.”
I saw the look that passed between Sharon and Adler and knew he’d ask her opinion before accepting or declining our offer. Adler was not only a good cop, but a good husband. Divorce rates for police officers were astronomical, but the Adlers worked hard for a good chance of defying the odds.
I glanced at Bill, laughing at Sharon’s tale of Jessica’s latest exploits, and wondered what chance of success our coming marriage would have. Neither of us was a cop any longer, but we’d been forever influenced by the job, right down to our bones.
As if reading my thoughts, Bill turned and bestowed on me a reassuring expression that temporarily sent my misgivings up in flames.
In that brief moment, Bill’s prior suggestion of eloping immediately seemed like a good idea.
CHAPTER 14
By dawn the next morning, my usual doubts and misgivings over commitment had replaced my euphoria and optimism of the night before. In the cozy comfort of the Adler home, watching Adler and Sharon interact, believing in happily-ever-after had been easy.
But awaking in my solitary bed in my condo, listening to the gulls fighting over food in the tidal flats outside my window, I couldn’t picture waking up every morning beside Bill. Not that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t imagine anything better. But what if I couldn’t break myself of lifelong habits?
Even now my brain churned with the what-ifs and possibilities of the Ashton case, and I
couldn’t turn it off.
Easier, my conscience pricked me, to deal with murder suspects than your own problems. Easier to trace leads than to loosen up and find ways to have fun.
“Shut up,” I told myself.
I nudged aside Roger, who slept curled against my legs, tossed back the covers and headed for the shower.
Bill was catching a flight to Nashville this morning to check out the checkered past of Ryan Wayne, aka Willard Ashton. After dropping Bill at the airport, I’d drive to Fort White to interview the guy who’d engaged in a slugfest with Ashton back when he was called Richard Cooper and operating a retreat on the Santa Fe River.
Before I made it to the shower, the phone by my bed rang.
Expecting Bill, I answered in my sexiest tone.
“Margaret,” Mother’s scandalized voice rang in my ear. “Have you been drinking?”
I intentionally misunderstood. “Haven’t had my coffee yet.”
“Well, I’m glad I found you at home.”
I glanced at the bedside clock. Where else would I be at 6:15 on a Sunday morning?
“I called,” she continued, “to invite you and your young man to have lunch at the club.”
“Sorry, Mo—” I caught myself before calling her Mom, an appellation she considered common and had forbidden me to use “—ther, but my young man is catching a plane in a couple hours for Tennessee.”
Her sigh of disapproval reverberated in my ear. “But you’ll come, of course? You never spend time with me.”
Either she’d already forgotten our recent lunch, or somehow it hadn’t counted in the scheme of daughterly obligations. “I’m heading for North Florida as soon as I drop Bill at the airport. We’re working a case.”
“Really, Margaret, what’s the point of being in business for yourself if you don’t take weekends off?”
“It’s these inconsiderate criminals. They have no sense of decorum.”
“Be serious,” she said with a snap of impatience. “I really must speak with you about the wedding.”
“And I need to talk with you, Mother.”
I was tempted to delay my trip, join her at the club, and lay down the law about canceling her fancy plans. But only because she’d be less likely to skin me alive in front of witnesses. However, the trail for Willard Ashton’s killer was getting colder by the minute, and I couldn’t afford the delay.
“Just promise me one thing,” I asked her.
“What?”
“That you won’t sign anything with Madame Lapierre or make any other commitments until we’ve talked.”
“Of course not. After all, dear, it is your wedding.”
I laughed aloud at the righteous indignation in her tone.
“If you don’t take these details seriously—” words of steel from a velvet larynx “—you’ll be too late to make the proper arrangements.”
“That’s what I need to talk to you about. I’ll call when I get back in town.”
“Be sure you do.”
She hung up without a goodbye, much less drive carefully, take care, or I love you.
I wasn’t expecting such sentiments. Intellectually, I understood that she probably wasn’t capable of expressing them, but how much I wanted to hear them was pathetic.
I showered and dressed quickly, then took Roger and his assortment of toys, dishes, food and doggy lounger to Darcy’s. He loved riding in the car and would have enjoyed the upcoming trip, but, so far, PBI had no need for an untrained K-9. If Roger caught a criminal, he’d either lick him senseless or hump his leg. At least, due to Darcy’s hospitality, the poor pooch was spared the slammer at the vet’s when I had to be away overnight.
When I left Darcy’s house, she was plying him with his favorite bone-marrow treats. The fickle pup didn’t even whine when I drove away, which proved what I’d always suspected: the way to Roger’s devotion was through his stomach.
After picking up Bill and dropping him at Departures at Tampa International Airport, I retraced my route toward the causeway and hung a right on the Suncoast Parkway, a toll road that would take me north of the Bay area, avoiding the worst of the traffic. The route passed through cypress swamps and cattle pastures, where the occasional clearing or plywood walls shrouded in Tyvek popped up like the first pustules in the erupting plague of development. Recent news articles had reported that more than 150,000 acres statewide, an area the size of Pinellas County, had fallen prey to new building in the past year. And people continued to flock in droves to live in Florida, blissfully ignoring the fact that with each new arrival, more of what attracted them here in the first place withered and died beneath the crush of bulldozers, concrete and asphalt.
I shook off my annoyance and resolved to enjoy the scenery while I could. I was instantly rewarded by the sight of a herd of Brahman cattle, which used to roam Pinellas pastures by the thousands. Elegant white cattle egrets sat upon their backs, pecking for insects, and rare whooping cranes scouted for food in a roadside drainage ditch.
The peace and tranquillity of the rural setting had only begun to work its magic when the Parkway dumped me onto U.S. 19 north of Brooksville, and I was once again in a concrete jungle and tangles of traffic. I white-knuckled it to north of Crystal River, where civilization gave way to desolate pine forests all the way to Chiefland. In that sleepy little town, I went through the drive-through at McDonald’s for a Diet Coke and burger.
Eating as I drove, I took a secondary road that ran northeast toward Fort White, and soon I was back in cattle country, pockmarked by For Sale signs and billboards advertising homesites available in soon-to-be massive subdivisions.
Since before the Civil War, Florida had been cattle country. The term cracker originated with the snap of the early drovers’ whips, and even today, Florida was the fourth-largest cattle producer in the nation. But with the subdividing of range lands, soon more beef products, just like oranges, would be imported from South America than grown in the Sunshine State.
Following the map Bill had printed out from his computer, south of Fort White I turned left at the entrance to River Tree Estates and followed a paved road shaded by arching oaks for a few hundred yards before it morphed into a crushed-shell drive. A few hundred yards farther, I found the street I was looking for and turned right onto another shell surface. The lots along the drive were huge, and the houses tucked away among oaks, pines, palmettos and wax myrtles, but I could tell by the occasional glimpse of stilted structures on my left that these homes fronted the Sante Fe River.
I navigated around potholes and an errant armadillo and searched for the address of Gerald Shively, the guy who had duked it out with Ryan Wayne when he’d been posing as Richard Cooper, before he’d become Willard Ashton, at River Spirit House a few miles north of my current location. Ahead, the street ended in a clump of underbrush, and on the left, Shively had been written in twisted rebar atop a huge rusty mailbox of dinged and dented tin.
Shively’s unpaved driveway meandered around clumps of trees and palmettos before ending abruptly in front of a large shed, its rust-streaked metal roof supported by what looked like the trunks of cabbage palms. I could see through the building, open on all sides, to the river beyond and the main house to the right. An old pickup truck, its bed loaded with scrap metal, was parked among the stilts that protected the house from rising waters. A blue tarp partially covered the junk and hid the license plate.
In the shed, a man dressed only in denim shorts, sandals and a welder’s helmet was torching the carcass of an old washing machine in a dazzling display of flying sparks. When I parked in front of the open building and stepped from my car, he turned off his equipment and flipped up his protective mask.
“You lost, lady?”
I waved a hand in front of my face, which did nothing to disperse the cloud of no-see-ums that had formed around my head. “I’m looking for Gerald Shively.”
“You found him.”
I tried to judge Shively’s age, but with his tall, wiry buil
d, skin tanned and desiccated by the sun, and dirty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, he could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. One thing was certain: he wasn’t the short, bald, scar-faced Hispanic Garth claimed to have seen. But I hadn’t expected to find Swinburn’s hostile stranger. That would have been too easy.
“You here to commission work?” Shively asked.
I glanced around the shed at the bizarre sculptures, combinations of old appliances, mufflers, barbed wire and tire rims, welded into various unrecognizable shapes and sizes. I didn’t know art, but I knew what I liked, and this wasn’t it.
I pulled my ID from my purse and showed it to him. “I’m investigating Willard Ashton.”
“Then you are lost, ’cause I never heard of him.” With a snap of his head, Shively lowered his face shield to end our conversation.
“Also known as Richard Cooper.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Shively removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. “Cooper, the scam artist. What do you want to know?”
“Why did he assault you?”
“It’s in the police report.”
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
“Lady, I’ve got work to do.”
“Give me the condensed version then.”
I was picking up strange vibes from Shively, which could have been his intense dislike of Cooper/Ashton or something more sinister. I hoped if I kept him talking, I’d figure him out.
“Short version—I asked for my money back from his so-called retreat. He refused. I threatened to sue. He hit me.”
“You attended one of River Spirit House’s retreats?” Although nominally an artist, Shively didn’t seem the type to meld meekly with the Universe. He had a cold, hard edge that screamed, “Back off,” a definite impediment to oneness.
His face contorted with disgust. “Believe me, participating in that farce wasn’t my idea. I told her the retreat was a bunch of crap.”
“Her?”
“My wife. We’d been having problems. Then this weirdo complex opens on the river north of here and offers seminars on renewing your marriage. Jayne insisted we give it a try or she was leaving.”
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