I took the elevator to the third floor, got off and followed the directional signs to 358. I glanced inside before entering. Mother was asleep, and Caroline, reading a hardcover book by Dan Brown, sat in a chair beside the bed. Like Mother, she considered paperbacks common and wouldn’t be caught dead with one, despite their portability, their ease on the advancing arthritis in her hands, and the fact that their content was exactly the same as the more expensive editions.
In addition to having picked up reading material, my sister looked as if she’d just come from a beauty spa. Her bottle-blond hair was perfectly styled, her subtle makeup perfection. Unlike the rumpled patio dress she’d worn last night, today she was decked out in a lavender skirt and twin set with color-coordinated Prada heels. I knew the brand because Prada was what she claimed she always wore. The only shoes I called by name were Mary Janes and Buster Browns, echoes from my childhood. I bought shoes that didn’t hurt my feet or cost a fortune, and I couldn’t care less what their names were. For that reason and several other fashion transgressions, Caroline considered me a barbarian.
A string of pearls and matching earrings completed Caroline’s flawless outfit, which had to be brand-new. I’d never seen my sister in the same clothes twice. As for me, it was a good thing clothes didn’t come with an expiration date. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to wear anything in my closet.
When Caroline looked up and saw me hovering in the hall, she closed her book and stepped out of the room.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Making remarkable progress. Dr. Katz said he’s never seen anyone recover so quickly. She’s hoping to go home in a few days.”
“That’s good.”
I was relieved, but, recalling what Dr. Fellows had told me earlier, I also felt a wave of anger at the woman who had denied me the acceptance and affection I’d craved all my life. Guilt followed hard on anger’s heels. How could I be mad at an old woman who’d just suffered a stroke?
I gazed past her sleeping form to a flower arrangement the size of a small refrigerator that filled the top of the table beside her bed. “I see she got my flowers.”
Caroline redirected my gaze to the windowsill and a porcelain teacup, filled with miniature jonquils and hyacinths. The refrigerator bouquet, I assumed, had come from Caroline and Hunt. My sister always managed to outdo any gift I gave my mother.
“Your flowers are very sweet,” Caroline said. “Mother was pleased.”
“Really? I haven’t been her favorite person lately.” Make that ever.
“I know.” Caroline patted my shoulder in a rare display of sisterly affection. “But I think this episode has her rethinking her attitude.”
I could hope, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. “I’m working on a case, so I can’t stay. Tell her I stopped by.”
“Do you need Hunt’s help?”
My brother-in-law, the insurance agent, considered detective work exciting and longed to be an amateur sleuth. He had no idea of the long hours of boredom, sitting on surveillance or digging through records. Of course, compared to his rate tables and actuarial charts, watching paint dry would be exciting. “Thanks for the offer, but Bill and I have it covered.”
Taking me by surprise, Caroline hugged me. “You’re a good kid, Margaret.”
Touched, I hugged her back. “Been a long time since either of us was a kid, sis.”
I hurried away with only a lingering twinge of guilt at the knowledge that I wanted to escape before Mother awoke.
I swung by the office to check my messages before meeting Adler at the Clearwater PD and was surprised to find Bill already there.
“I finished up in Sarasota as soon as I could, in case you needed me.” He enveloped me in a bear hug, then held me at arm’s length and studied my face. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“And your mother?”
“She’ll probably outlive me.” I’d wait till later to tell him what I’d learned from Seton Fellows. “We’ve been hired by Stella Branigan to investigate her husband’s murder.”
“I heard about his death on the car radio on the drive back,” Bill said. “I’m glad for the work, but why hire us? Isn’t that Clearwater’s jurisdiction?”
I nodded. “But Stella Branigan strikes me as the kind of woman who likes to be in control. She can’t tell the police what to do, so we’re it.”
“Where do we start?”
“Adler and his partner are interviewing a suspect and said we can observe, but we’ll have to hurry. I’ll fill you in on the way over.”
Bill hugged me again and kissed me hard. “It’s great working together, just like old times.”
I smiled to myself, still tasting his kiss and thinking, Just like old times—only better.
George Ulrich couldn’t see Bill and me through the one-way glass in the Clearwater PD interview room where Adler and Porter double-teamed him.
Most suspects are uncomfortable under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights and the intense scrutiny of interrogators, but not Ulrich. Being suspected of murder did nothing to dull his aura of arrogance and self-importance. He’d never made a secret of his political aspirations, which had been his motivating force in helping the sheriff’s office take over Pelican Bay policing. In his sixties, with a short Napoleonic figure and thinning hair styled in a comb-over, Ulrich wore a well-tailored blue suit that barely concealed his paunchy stomach, a red power tie and a crisp white shirt.
“I’m a busy man,” he complained. “Can we get on with this?”
“We’ll ask the questions,” Porter shot back, undaunted by the politician’s egotism.
“Tell us about your visit to Carlton Branigan this morning,” Adler ordered. “His wife and the butler both described you as fired up.”
Ulrich took a leisurely swallow from the can of root beer Adler had given him and cleared his throat. “I admit it. I’m mad as hell at Branigan. His flunkies are running a smear campaign against my wife, and I don’t like it one bit.”
Ulrich had made life hell for the entire Pelican Bay Police Department, destroying their jobs, upending their lives. Now a political enemy had made his life miserable. What goes around, comes around, I thought.
“If he can’t beat me on the issues,” Ulrich was saying, “and has to resort to mudslinging, then he doesn’t deserve to win. That’s what I told him.”
“He didn’t win,” Porter drawled. “No doubt about that.”
“Mind if I look at your hands?” Adler asked.
Ulrich seemed puzzled, but he held his hands above the table, palms down. The skin on the back of them was mottled with age spots.
“Turn them over,” Adler ordered.
Ulrich flipped his palms upward. Even at a distance, I could tell that they were soft and smooth.
“Those hands didn’t strangle Branigan,” Bill said in a low voice. “The vines would have scored marks on his palms.”
“Unless he wore gloves.” I wanted Ulrich to be guilty and was struggling to remain objective. “But if he went to Branigan’s to kill him, you’d think he’d have taken a weapon. Especially since Branigan had almost a foot of height and fifty or sixty pounds advantage.”
“Maybe he didn’t plan to kill him,” Bill said, “but when Branigan wouldn’t agree to back off Ulrich’s wife, Ulrich killed him in a rage.”
“Then we’re back to the unmarked hands.” As much as I longed to charge Ulrich, my instincts were telling me he wasn’t our killer.
We watched Adler and Porter ply Ulrich with questions, which he answered without hesitation.
“He’s sticking to his story,” Bill said, “and even though he’s furious over Branigan’s tactics, I don’t think he’s our man.”
Unfortunately, I agreed. Either Ulrich had supernatural control over his body language or he was an innocent man. A self-serving bastard, but not a murderer.
But if Ulrich hadn’t killed the senator, who had?
Unable to shake his story, Adler and Porter fina
lly cut Ulrich loose. I thanked them for letting us observe, and Bill and I walked to his car in the station parking lot.
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in our favorite booth at the Dock of the Bay, watching the sun set over the marina. Primarily a family restaurant but with an adjacent active and noisy bar, the place was packed with tourists. On the ancient Wurlitzer jukebox, Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett were belting out, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere,” and most of the crowd in the bar were singing along.
While sipping beer and waiting for our order, I filled Bill in on everything I knew about the Fisk murder and my conversations with Stella Branigan.
“So how do you think we should approach our investigation?” I asked.
Bill considered for a moment, drawing circles with his finger in the condensation on his beer mug. “Tomorrow I’ll check with Branigan’s political aides and see if any enemies other than Ulrich turn up. You can go to Tampa.”
I nodded. “To follow the Fisk connection.”
“Study the cold case files at the PD and see if anything jumps out at you.”
“I’ll also have another chat with Elaine Fisk.”
Bill raised his eyebrows.
“She might know more than she’s let on,” I explained. “Suppose, despite her insistence to the contrary, that Deirdre had told Elaine that Branigan was the man who had tried to kill her sixteen years ago. Elaine would hold him responsible not only for that attack but also for the fact that Deirdre was murdered while trying to hunt him down. That’s a pretty powerful motive.”
Bill nodded. “Elaine could have confronted Branigan and killed him.”
“It’s a stretch, because Elaine’s a small woman, but rage sometimes provides superhuman strength.” Bill and I had worked enough homicides to know that every angle, however unlikely, had to be pursued and eliminated.
Our meal arrived, honest-to-God hamburgers with all the trimmings on homemade buns and the best French fries in the Bay area. Real artery-clogging delights that we allowed ourselves only occasionally. Bill took a big bite, chewed with gusto and swallowed. I dipped a fry in ketchup.
“What about Roger?” he asked.
“Damn.” In all the excitement over Branigan’s murder, I’d forgotten about the dog.
I related my latest conversation with Jolene and her insistence that we come up with a plan. Bill nixed impersonating Animal Control.
“Maybe we should use part of Jolene’s retainer and buy the dog back,” he suggested.
“Offer Gracie five thousand dollars?”
He nodded. “We’d be five thousand richer and case closed.”
“It might work,” I said. “We’d have Roger, but Gracie would be out of a job.”
“It won’t hurt to try,” he said with a shrug.
“You or me?”
He dug into his pocket for a quarter. “We’ll flip for it.”
I lost the toss, so I planned to stop by to see Gracie before heading to Tampa tomorrow.
We finished our meal and walked back to the Ten-Ninety-Eight.
10-98. Assignment completed. I no longer worked for the police department, but I would never consider my assignment in law enforcement finished until the monster who had killed those little girls was arrested and convicted. My gut was telling me that my old nemesis was somehow connected to the murders of Deirdre Fisk and Carlton Branigan. And my skin was itching like hell.
Bill steadied me as I climbed on board. Inside the cabin, I settled on the loveseat in the lounge. Bill sat beside me and turned on the radio to a station playing “The Music of Our Lives.”
“We need to talk, Margaret.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”
“We’re getting married in ten months. We have to make plans.”
“What’s to plan? We agreed on a small civil ceremony.”
He wrapped one arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “I know you don’t want to live on the Ten-Ninety-Eight, but your condo’s only a one-bedroom, a tight squeeze for the two of us. We should decide where we want to live.”
The thought of moving, of upsetting the comfortable status quo I’d enjoyed the past three years since Bill had retired, bought his boat and sailed back into my life, sent my nerve endings into fresh spasms.
“We shouldn’t rush into anything,” I said.
“Rush?” Bill laughed. “I’ve been wanting to marry you for twenty years. We haven’t exactly hurried up to this point.”
Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I’d always hated change. And the older I grew, the less I liked alterations and transitions that disturbed my comfortable rut. I’d lived in my condo more than twelve years. It had been the one constant in my chaotic lifestyle, and I was having trouble visualizing living anywhere else.
“You know how tight the real estate market is,” Bill said. “Pinellas is the most densely populated county in the state, and more people are moving here in droves every day. And property values are escalating through the roof. If we want to find the right spot, we should start looking now.”
“We’re in the middle of a murder investigation,” I protested, hoping to delay the inevitable. “Where will we find time to meet with real-estate agents?”
He tugged me closer and tucked my head beneath his chin. His voice rumbled in his chest beneath my ear. “We work for ourselves now. We take the time whenever we want.”
Bill could be stubborn. He was determined to find a home for us, and tonight, tired and frustrated by the recent murders, I found it easier to go along.
“What kind of place do you have in mind?” I said.
I couldn’t see myself living in a subdivision. At my age, I was well past the soccer-mom stage, and neither Bill nor I liked lawn work.
Bill shrugged. “No preconceptions. Why don’t we just see what’s out there? It’ll be fun, like a treasure hunt.”
More like a root canal. I envied his boundless optimism, his joy in living, and wished it would rub off on me. He seemed to have some kind of internal switch that allowed him to turn off all thoughts of work, to compartmentalize his job from the rest of his life and release his inner child to play. Maybe it was a guy thing.
I should be so lucky. Later, lying in his arms in the wide berth in the cabin, rocked by the waves, I couldn’t get the pictures of little girls’ bloated bodies out of my mind.
CHAPTER 8
The sun was rising when I left the Ten-Ninety-Eight the next morning. I wanted an early start, in case I was lucky enough to snag Roger and had to detour back to the beach to return him to Jolene before heading for Tampa.
Most party-hearty tourists were still asleep, and the marina was deserted and quiet, except for the raucous cries of gulls scavenging for breakfast. The wind was calm, and not a single ripple disturbed the glassy surface of St. Joseph Sound, where a light mist rose from waters cooler than the air.
I returned to my condo for a quick shower and change of clothes and to call Adler for the address of Katy, Elaine Fisk’s friend. A second call to the nurses’ station at the hospital assured me that Mother had spent a restful night with no complications.
By eight, I was turning onto the Largo street where Gracie was staying at her Uncle Slim’s.
From down the block, I spotted her in her pajamas, robe and bunny slippers, walking Roger on a lead, so I parked a few houses away to keep from spooking her and having her run back inside. As soon as I left my car and locked the door, however, Roger sighted me, gave a joyful yip and dragged Gracie toward me. When he reached me, he stood at my feet, wagging his tail and looking exactly as if he was smiling.
Firmly grasping his leash, Gracie leaned over with her hands on her knees and struggled to catch her breath. “It’s okay, he won’t bite,” she managed to wheeze.
I figured Gracie needed the exercise more than Roger.
“Hey, Rog.” I scratched the pug behind his ears. “Good boy.”
Gracie snapped to attention when I called Roger by name. “Who are you?”
“Maggie Skerritt. I spoke with you the other day, through the door.”
Gracie’s eyes widened with a hopeful expression. “Did you bring an apology from Jolene?”
“Not exactly.”
Gracie scooped up Roger and clutched him against her chest, as if afraid I’d snatch him away. She narrowed her small eyes behind her glasses. “What exactly?”
“I have an offer. I pay you five thousand dollars, you give me the dog.”
“Five thousand dollars?” With her lips puckered in disapproval, she shook her head. The sum wasn’t having the effect I’d hoped for. “That’s peanuts. Roger’s a celebrity dog. I could sell him for more than that on eBay.”
Roger, fortunately, had no idea what Gracie was suggesting. Still smiling, he squirmed in her arms, trying to free himself to chase a squirrel digging at the foot of a nearby tree.
“You’d actually do that?” I said with a surge of sympathy for the poor animal that was the rope in this tug-of-war between Gracie and her employer. “You’d put him up for auction?”
Hesitation flickered only for a moment on her features before Gracie nodded. “And you can tell that old bitch I said so.”
“Look, Gracie, be reasonable. You want your job. Jolene wants Roger. The money I’m offering comes from what she paid me to find him. She doesn’t have to know you have it. Take the five thousand and Roger and go back to Jolene.”
Apparently exhausted from her brisk walk and Roger’s frantic wiggling, Gracie plopped on the curb and set him down. He lunged at the squirrel until he almost strangled at the end of his leash, and it skittered up the tree and sat on a low branch, scolding us with its loud chattering. Roger strained at the lead, his feet running, his body going nowhere.
Gracie, looking as deflated as a punctured pool toy, shook her head again, and her lower lip trembled, as if she was ready to cry. “You don’t get it. It’s a matter of principle. That woman makes my life miserable.”
Bribery had failed, so I tried reason. “But you need the job, and she needs you and Roger.”
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