Holidays Are Murder

by Charlotte Douglas

  “My brother-in-law?”

  Isabelle nodded. “Just last month, Hunt persuaded Vince to double his life insurance. Thank God, he did. Now, although they’ve lost a husband and father, my girls won’t lose their home and way of life.”

  “Isabelle?” A familiar voice rang out inside the house, followed by my mother’s entry onto the deck. With every snowy hair in place and dressed in tailored camel-colored slacks, a creamy ivory twin set and her best pearls, she carried a large wicker basket looped over her arm. “I’m so sorry about Vince. I had Estelle prepare a chicken casserole and her orange chiffon cake. And if there’s anything else you need, darling, you have only to ask.”

  Isabelle rose, greeted my mother with kisses on both cheeks, and handed the basket to Twanya, who was hovering nearby. “That’s so kind of you, dear. Where would we be in times of tragedy without our friends? Add another glass to the tea tray, Twanya.”

  Only then did Mother notice my presence.

  “Why, Margaret, I didn’t expect to find you here, but I’m glad you’ve come to express your sympathy.” For once her expression was approving.

  “She’s here to question Samantha,” Isabelle said in a cold voice, shattering Mother’s misconception of my social graces.

  Mother’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t you leave that poor girl alone? She just lost her husband.”

  No one could put me on the defensive better than my mother, but I fought the urge to turn tail and run. “Vincent Lovelace wasn’t lost. He was murdered. I need to talk with Samantha.”

  “You can wait until after the funeral,” Mother said in her dismissive tone that indicated, as far as she was concerned, the matter was closed.

  I took a deep breath, exhaled, and restrained myself from scratching the welts that had risen on my forearms. Although I’d taken Benadryl in the car, the antihistamine hadn’t had time to take effect. “I can either talk to Samantha here or I can send a couple of uniforms to escort her to the station. What’s it going to be?”

  With a sigh of exasperation, Isabelle tossed aside her towel. “Samantha has nothing to hide. Let’s get this over with so she can grieve in peace.”

  Isabelle went into the house and Mother turned on me, her eyes flashing with fury. “Isabelle Weston is my dearest friend. How dare you cause such a scene in her home?”

  Feeling five years old again, I held my ground. “I’m doing my job, Mother. Your dearest friend’s son-in-law has been murdered. Don’t you want his killer brought to justice?”

  “Why question Samantha? Is she a suspect?”

  Was my mother really such an innocent that she didn’t know a spouse was at the top of the list in a murder investigation? “If Samantha is innocent, she has nothing to fear from my questions.”

  “I won’t stay and be a party to this,” Mother said with an indignant sniff, and turned her back on me. She strode across the deck and met Isabelle and Samantha coming out.

  Mother hugged Samantha with more warmth than she’d ever exhibited toward me, then squeezed Isabelle’s hands. “Call me if you need me.”

  “I’ll see you to the door,” Isabelle said, and the two left me alone with Samantha.

  She shuffled toward a chair at the edge of the deck as if still feeling the effects of whatever drug Dr. Fellows had given her. She wore a gown and peignoir in a sheer cotton, pin-tucked, smocked and trimmed with delicate lace, an elegant contrast to the oversize departmental T-shirt I usually slept in. In spite of her sedation, her face appeared more ravaged than it had the night before, and her eyes reflected the torture of the damned, making me wonder if grief, guilt or an overdose of both caused her torment.

  “I thought I’d answered all your questions last night,” she said with a slight slur to her words, as if she wasn’t fully awake.

  “That was before we learned your husband’s drowning wasn’t accidental.”

  “What?” Her head snapped up, her eyes focused and her surprise was either genuine or a remarkable performance. “That’s not possible. No one else was there.”

  “Except you?”

  Samantha burst into tears. “I loved my husband. I can’t believe anyone would think I’d…I can’t even say it, much less do it!” She wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her peignoir and glared at me. “Why would I want to harm the person I love most in the whole world?”

  I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t allow sympathy to color my objectivity or temper my questions. “Who’s the beneficiary on his insurance policy?”

  She flinched as if I’d slapped her. “That’s none of your business.”

  “Money’s a strong motive for murder.”

  “Vince made tons of money. I had more than I needed.”

  “Your own account?”

  She hesitated, then shook her head. “Vince controlled the finances, but he never denied me anything I asked for.” Her tears flowed again, raining in splotches on her expensive robe. “He was a wonderful, generous man. And now he’s gone.”

  “Your mother says he spent too much time working.” I was picking up strange vibes from Samantha, genuine grief over her husband’s death accompanied by distinct undertones of guilt.

  She nodded. “I wanted him to spend more time with me, with our daughters.” Her face crumpled. “I wanted to see more of him, and now he’s gone forever.”

  Sensing Samantha knew more than she was telling, I prodded further. “Did you see or hear anything before you found him in the pool?”

  She grew still for a moment. “Something woke me up. A boat with a loud engine. That’s when I went looking for Vince. When he wasn’t in his study, I checked the pool. But I didn’t see him at first, because he was on the bottom. If I’d found him sooner—”

  She burst into fresh sobs.

  “You should leave now.” Isabelle spoke behind me. “If you want to talk to Samantha again, you’ll have to wait until her lawyer’s present.”

  Isabelle’s late husband had headed Pelican Bay’s most prestigious law firm, so his widow knew enough law to be dangerous. The feisty little woman pushed up the sleeves of her workout jacket, as if ready, all four foot ten of her, to toss me out.

  Once she’d uttered the L-word, I knew further questioning was futile.

  Twanya appeared, carrying a tray with four glasses and a pitcher of tea.

  “You can show Detective Skerritt out,” Isabelle told her.

  I rose from my chair. Samantha, still crying, buried her face in her hands. Isabelle fixed me with a lethal stare that hastened my departure.

  Twanya set down her tray and escorted me to the door. As she let me out, she leaned forward and whispered, “Lady, you really know how to piss people off. I never seen Miss Isabelle so mad.”

  “Special course in detective school,” I said with a straight face. “I aced it.”

  I stepped outside and sighed as the door closed behind me. With Samantha my prime suspect, between Isabelle and my mother, my butt was toast.

  CHAPTER 6

  I stopped at Scallops, a downtown sidewalk café, and ordered sandwiches and sodas to go before I drove across the causeway to the beach. Adler met me at the Lovelace house, warrant in hand.

  We circled the house to the pool. With the patio furniture covered with fingerprint powder, we sat on the stone wall of the terrace in the sun. Adler dug into his sandwich and bag of chips with his usual gusto, but my appetite had been ruined by the run-in with my mother. I described the encounter for Adler along with what little I’d gleaned from my brief interview with Samantha.

  “The only bright side of this whole scenario,” I said, “is that the chief is on vacation until the beginning of next week. As long as he’s in Jackson Hole, he won’t be breathing down our necks.”

  The name of Shelton’s getaway destination had the entire department vying for who could come up with the best play on words. So far, Lenny Jacobs in vice was the frontrunner with, “One good hole deserves another.”

  “Don’t count on the chief’s not knowin
g,” Adler said. “The cable news channels were announcing Lovelace’s death this morning. Heard it while I was dressing for work.”

  “At that time, we weren’t aware that he was murdered, so the chief doesn’t know yet, either.”

  “While I was waiting for the warrant, I ordered the logs for the house phones and the Lovelaces’ cells,” Adler said. “We should have a record of their recent calls by Monday.”

  “Monday? Why so long?”

  “Holiday weekend.”

  If I used my imagination, I could almost pretend I was on holiday. The day was cloudless, the Gulf had barely a light chop and the white sugar-sand sparkled in the sunlight. Sea oats and palm fronds waved in the breeze, and the Lovelace house with its terraced landscaping and pool appeared as impressive by the light of day as it had in the moonlight.

  Adler glanced around. “Why did someone want him dead?”

  “Maybe he had something he shouldn’t have. Or something someone else wanted. That’s what we’re here to find out.” I stuffed my half-eaten sandwich into the bag and drained the last of my Diet Coke. “Any word from the crime lab?”

  “Rafferty called.” Adler cocked his head back to catch the crumbs from his chip bag. “Said with this case and another homicide in St. Pete, he’ll have to put off processing the surveillance video you sent until sometime next week.”

  “Anything turn up from this crime scene?”

  “No prints on the skimmer pole, but it did have Lovelace’s skin cells in the crevices of the grip on the end of the handle, just as you suspected. Blood on the arm of the chair is the vic’s. The first puddle of water from the pool deck tested as Gulf water. The second came from the pool.”

  I turned and studied the expanse of sand between the dunes. Apparently late yesterday afternoon someone had approached from the beach. A large fiddler fig by the edge of the terrace could have provided cover until Lovelace came out of the house for his regular-as-clockwork swim. The intruder must have dripped salt water onto the pool deck while he—or she—held Lovelace under after knocking him into the pool with the chair, then raked the path back to the boat to cover footprints. The sand was now riddled with bird tracks. The crime scene tape staked across the beach into the breakers had discouraged human traffic.

  “Let’s look for a rake,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t the killer have tossed it into the boat as he left?”

  I nodded. “If he didn’t have an accomplice who cleaned up after him.”

  By 4:00 p.m. Adler and I had combed every inch of the Lovelace house, grounds and garage. We found no rake or any type of gardening equipment. No pool equipment, either. Apparently the family had kept the skimmer net merely to retrieve items that fell into the pool. I did find invoices on Lovelace’s desk from the lawn and pool services.

  Adler took the personal computers of the victim, Samantha and her girls when he left. He would try cracking their passwords and reading their e-mails. I hoped he’d find something helpful. Our entire afternoon had turned up zip. No steamy love letters, no threatening calls on voice mail, no overt signs of marital discord, no backlog of unpaid bills or letters of extortion. All I had found of any interest was Samantha’s stash of Xanax, secreted in her lingerie drawer, but whether she had a reason to feel anxious or merely had trouble sleeping, I had yet to determine.

  Before leaving the Lovelace house, I called the Pelican Bay offices of Your Vacation Channel, but got only a recorded message, saying the staff would be back in the office on Monday. Adler explained that, due to the Thanksgiving weekend, all their programming was canned, requiring only a technician or two to keep the network up and running until everyone returned from vacation. I’d tried contacting Lovelace’s secretary, Elaine, at home with no answer. I hoped I could track her down and Dan Rankin, the disgruntled ex-partner, before the case got any colder.

  On a hunch, I stopped at the yacht club after leaving the crime scene. The sprawling bungalow-style building with its white clapboards and cypress-shingled roof hugged the dunes, its humble exterior disguising the opulence that lay inside. Only the meticulous landscaping with its well-trimmed shrubs and profusion of annuals in bloom hinted at the money needed to maintain the place.

  The early-dinner crowd hadn’t arrived yet and the late-lunch set had departed, so the clubhouse with its impressive old rafters, polished wooden floors, expensive floral arrangements and white linens, was almost deserted. The hatchet-faced hostess in her usual black silk dress, single-strand pearls and sour expression guarded the entrance to the dining room like a temple dog.

  “Are you a member?” she asked, knowing full well I wasn’t.

  I tapped the shield protruding from my blazer pocket. “Detective Skerritt. I’d like to ask a few questions.”

  “You’ll have to speak with the manager.”

  “That’ll work.”

  She hurried away, her high heels tapping on the highly glossed heart-pine floors, and returned in a few minutes with a middle-aged, balding man dressed in an expensive suit and ultraconservative tie.

  “I’m John Gilbert,” he said. “How can I help you?”

  “One of your members died yesterday, Vincent Lovelace,” I began.

  He nodded with sympathy. “A tragic drowning. And Mr. Lovelace such a good swimmer, too.”

  “What can you tell me about Mr. Lovelace?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Did you notice anything odd about his relationship with his family or any of the members here?”

  Gilbert’s expression shut down as if someone had pulled a shade. “This is a private club. What happens here stays here.”

  “Like Vegas?” I said with a smile, hoping to crack the sudden ice of his demeanor.

  Apparently my charm factor needed work. The lines of Gilbert’s face hardened. “This is private property, Detective. Unless you have a warrant, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “Thanks for your help.” I glanced over his shoulder at the hostess whose smirk did nothing to soften the sharp angles of her face. “You, too. I’ll be sure to tell my mother how cooperative you’ve been about the death of her best friend’s son-in-law.”

  “Your mother?” Gilbert asked with a frown.

  “Mrs. Philip Skerritt.” Mother’s attitude would be the same as the manager’s, but he didn’t know that.

  “Oh,” Gilbert said, and the hostess’s smirk faded. From the distress on their faces, I could tell the Queen Mother instilled the same terror in others that she did in me, but the invocation of her name did nothing to loosen their tongues.

  I restrained myself from hurrying out the door to escape the oppression I always suffered in that bastion of the elite. By the exit, an easel with a poster, decorated with gold glitter and holly leaves and berries in green-and-red velvet, caught my eye. It announced the club’s annual Christmas tea to be held tomorrow afternoon. Every December Mother had invited me to attend what was one of the biggest social events of the year in Pelican Bay, and I had always refused, usually with the valid excuse that I was working. This year, I might make an exception, if only in an attempt to return to Mother’s good graces after the fiasco at Isabelle’s, but mainly to pick up dirt on the Lovelaces. I was that desperate to solve this case before Shelton returned.

  I stepped outside, blinked in the brilliant afternoon sun, and started for my car.

  “Detective?” a male voice called behind me.

  I turned to see a young man, dressed in the black slacks, white shirt and black tie of the club waiter and grinding out a cigarette beneath his polished black shoe. The muscles bulging beneath his stiffly starched shirt testified that he lifted more than dinner trays. “Yes?”

  “You don’t know me,” he said—but I recognized him instantly. He was the waiter with buns of steel that Cedric Langford had been so enamored of the last time I’d had dinner with Mother at the club. Mother, desperate to see me married and settled, had imported Cedric from the polo grounds of Palm Beach. The old dear had been t
otally unaware that the man she envisioned as a prospective son-in-law was a flaming queen.

  “Just wanted to say thanks for your stopping those punks a few weeks ago.” The waiter’s friendly enthusiasm reminded me of an overeager puppy. “The valet’s a good kid. He told me the robbers wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot somebody if you hadn’t intervened.”

  “Just doing my job. Have you worked here long?”

  “Couple of years.”

  “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  He glanced back toward the clubhouse, then motioned me to a spot on the sidewalk that couldn’t be seen from inside. “Anything to help a hero. What do you want to know?”

  “Vince and Samantha Lovelace. They come here often?”

  He shook his head. “Not the guy. But his wife’s here almost every day.”

  “Doing what?”

  “She has lunch in the sports room before her tennis lessons.”

  “She plays a lot of tennis?”

  He shook his head. “That’s the funny part. I’ve never seen her play with anyone. She just takes lessons. Can’t blame her, though. The new pro is a looker. I’d take a few lessons myself if he weren’t so enthusiastically heterosexual.”

  Unlike the forbidding rooms of the clubhouse, the club’s tennis courts held sweet memories. My father and I had twice won the father-daughter tournament when I was in my teens. “You think there was something going on between Mrs. Lovelace and—”

  “Alberto Suarez. He’s from Argentina. A real Latin lover, at least on the surface. Whether he was actually getting it on with Mrs. Lovelace, I dunno. But they definitely spent a lot of time together.”

  “He gives lots of lessons?”

  The waiter nodded. “He’s raking in the dough. Just bought a top-of-the-line ski boat.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Yeah, the dude comes to work in it. Docks it at the club marina.”

  “Where does he moor it when he’s not at work?”

  “At Pirate’s Cove, a marina in Dunedin near the apartment complex where he lives.”