Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  But she’d ingested poison, I thought, and it hadn’t been in her diet drink. “What can you tell me about Edie’s friends, her family?”

  “Edie’s folks are dead. She never mentions any friends. I think she’s pretty much a loner.” Tonya stirred more cream into her mug, then held it, childlike, cradled in both hands as she drank.

  “Would you say she’s been depressed, suffering from stress from the diet, maybe?”

  She blew on her coffee while she thought. “No, Edie’s always quiet, but she’s been happier since she started this diet than in all the years I’ve known her.”

  So happy she killed herself? Not likely. “What about enemies?”

  Tonya giggled. “Not unless you count Old Pruneface. That’s Mrs. Austin, our supervisor. She rides us pretty hard. Nobody likes her.”

  “Did Edith ever mention a Jeff Hadley?”

  “Sure. Hadley’s one of our linemen, and easy on the eyes, too. Has the kind of hot looks that make women crazy. We both talk to him almost every day. Edie and I are dispatchers.”

  “But Edith never saw him outside of work?”

  “Not that I know of. She flirts with him over the phone, not so much what she says as how she says it, the sexy-voice thing. But that’s all there is to it.”

  “Where were you between five-thirty and six-thirty last night?”

  Tonya’s mouth gaped, and she sucked air. “You don’t think I—”

  “I’m just gathering information.”

  She set down her mug and shoved her hair off her face again. “I picked up the kids at day care right after work and drove straight home. Clark, that’s my husband, was already here. We ordered pizza and spent the evening watching television.”

  I gulped the last of my coffee. “If you think of anything else that might be helpful, call me at this number.”

  I dug a card out of my pocket, handed it to Tonya and turned to leave.

  A sleepy-eyed young man, wearing only bikini briefs that left nothing to the imagination, stood in the doorway. His eyes widened when he saw me.

  “Holy shit!” He leaped backward into the hallway and out of sight.

  Another Baptist. I let myself out the front door.

  An hour later, I was wiping sweat from my forehead and fighting a gagging reflex. The air-conditioning at the county morgue had died the day before, and while the maintenance trucks had been parked out front when I arrived, the system was obviously not yet repaired.

  Worse than the heat was the overwhelming stench of antiseptics and decaying flesh. Beside me, Adler, witnessing his first autopsy, swallowed repeatedly.

  Noting Adler’s bobbing Adam’s apple, Doc Cline halted her description of Edith Wainwright’s vital statistics, stepped away from the body on the stainless-steel table and retrieved a galvanized pail from a utility closet.

  She shoved the bucket into Adler’s hands. “Don’t make a mess.”

  Tinged green beneath his tan, he nodded and hugged the pail close to his chest.

  Doris returned to Edith’s clothed corpse and with gentle fingers examined scalp, torso and extremities. After removing and tagging the victim’s clothing, she studied the entire body again.

  “No overt signs of trauma,” she announced.

  While Doris extracted and weighed internal organs, I puzzled over Edith’s death. If the young woman had committed suicide, what had happened to the poison container? And if she’d been murdered, why had someone wanted her dead? Maybe Edith’s lifestyle hadn’t been the quiet, reclusive one Tonya and Mrs. Eagleton had described.

  “Stomach is empty,” Doris said, “except for small traces of what appears to be chocolate.”

  Doris’s crisp, clear voice jerked my attention back to the autopsy, just as Adler splattered the contents of his own stomach into the pail.

  “My partner, on the other hand,” I said, “appears to have enjoyed a hearty breakfast.”

  “Happens to the best of them.” Doris threw Adler a sympathetic look. “I’ve had bigger men pass out cold, and regularly, not only their first time.”

  Adler groaned. “Don’t give me any ideas.”

  The medical examiner removed her gloves. “A toxicological analysis will confirm whether my suspicion of cyanide poisoning is correct.”

  “You get the easy job,” I said. “If it is cyanide, I have to figure out how it got there.”

  I left the M.E.’s office and drove back to Pelican Bay. No one answered the door at Karen Englewood’s house on Windward Lane, the second address on my list, so I headed back to the station and took the scenic route along Edgewater Drive.

  Thirty-foot Washingtonian palms towered over the roadway. To the west, St. Joseph Sound sparkled like a crust of diamonds in the morning sun. In the flats exposed by low tide, egrets and herons stalked their breakfast, while in the deeper waters of the channel, the pelicans that gave the town its name dived like clumsy circus clowns for fish.

  Walkers and joggers crowded a paved path that wound through parkland amid pines and palms on the water’s edge. I envied those whose Saturday morning held nothing more challenging than a seaside stroll. I turned my twelve-year-old Volvo, another purchase from my father’s legacy, onto the narrow main street of the business district.

  Pelican Bay formed where Pelican Creek emptied into St. Joseph Sound. Early settlers appreciated the beauty of the site and established a community there in the late 1840s, after Florida became a state. A cotton gin and rough-planked dock, where steamers collected crops of sea island cotton, sweet potatoes and oranges to transport north to the railhead at Cedar Key, had once occupied the waterfront. Today, a large marina covered the basin, where sailboats clustered like a forest of defoliated trees. Bill Malcolm moored his boat in their midst.

  Beside the marina, Sophia’s, a resort hotel and four-star restaurant, built like a Venetian palazzo, stood where Main ended at the water’s edge. Main Street, its early-1900s buildings restored and newer buildings constructed in the same turn-of-the-century style, drew antiques-seekers from all over the world.

  I don’t care much for antiques, but I can understand why people flocked to stroll the tree-shaded brick sidewalks, wander through the dozens of shops and stop for cold drinks and sandwiches at the picturesque sidewalk cafés. All very pretty and good for tourism, but if I wanted a new pair of pantyhose or a light bulb, I had to drive to Clearwater.

  I slowed to a stop where the Pinellas Trail intersected Main and waited while an athletic couple in black spandex skated by on their Rollerblades. The trail, a former railroad track converted to parkland and bicycle paths, stretched from Tarpon Springs south to St. Petersburg. By midmorning, it was already clogged with joggers and cyclists. A conduit for crime, Darcy called it, because roving gangs of teenagers on bikes sometimes robbed trail-users or adjacent homes and made fast getaways on the trail, particularly at night along the unlighted path.

  When I entered the station parking lot, Chief Shelton’s car stood in its reserved parking space. He never came in on Saturdays unless there was trouble. But murder was trouble enough to rouse him out of bed on a weekend.

  When I reached my office without encountering the chief, I breathed a sigh of relief, but my reprieve was short-lived.

  “Skerritt! Get in here!”

  That the chief chose shouting down the hallway instead of using the intercom was a clear sign of his displeasure. I plodded into his office, followed by the curious stare of Kyle Dayton, the day-shift dispatcher.

  “Shut the door!” Dressed in an electric turquoise shirt and plaid pants, the chief paced back and forth before the picture window that overlooked the downtown park.

  I could never understand why some men chose to spend their leisure time dressed in ugly clothes and hitting a tiny ball with a stick. But I was certain at least part of the chief’s rage came from the fact that his regular Saturday morning golf game had been delayed, if not canceled, by events of the previous night.

  I started to speak, thought better of it
and studied the plaques on the paneled walls: certificates of appreciation from the chamber of commerce, membership in the Rotary Club and a Paul Harris Fellowship. I’d seen them all before, but repeat scrutiny kept me from confronting the tall, angry man pacing his office like a caged jungle cat. He’d turn on me soon enough without my making the first move.

  George Shelton had never forgiven me for suing the department for discrimination when they’d passed over me in the hiring process sixteen years ago. He’d liked it even less a year later when I won my case, and he was forced by the court to hire me.

  Raised in the Georgia foothills, rumored to have belonged to the Klan in his youth, wounded and decorated in Vietnam, Shelton made it plain to all in his department that he regarded working in law enforcement a privilege accessible only to those macho enough to meet his entrance requirements, the major one being certain physical equipment that I lacked, although balls have been ascribed to me by a few fellow officers speaking figuratively.

  Through my job performance and failure to cave in under both subtle and overt harassment, I’d gained a small measure of grudging respect from the chief over the years, but a crisis brought all his old prejudices boiling to the top. When Shelton felt pressure, he wanted a man he could count on to get his ass out of the sling.

  He stopped abruptly and leaned forward with both hands spread upon the high-gloss surface of his desk. I tried to remember what my own desktop looked like underneath all my files.

  “I’ve had a dozen calls already this morning about the murder last night.” His voice was heavy with accusation. “The mayor, two members of city council and several residents of Azalea Acres. They all want to know what we’re doing to catch this killer.”

  Rumors traveled faster than the speed of light in a small community like Pelican Bay. The presence of emergency vehicles and a CSU van on Grove Street had started tongues wagging, and the pressure was on the chief to nab the killer.

  He glared at me, pale blue eyes burning under bushy gray brows. Sunlight from the picture window reflected off his bald head, producing a bizarre halo effect. The devil disguised as a saint.

  “We haven’t determined that it is murder.” I kept my response low-key, as if speaking to an animal I didn’t want to spook. “It could be suicide. I’m checking it out.”

  Or I would have been checking it out if I hadn’t been standing there being reamed out like an incorrigible schoolgirl.

  “You made detective over my better judgment, Skerritt. Don’t screw this up and prove me right.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Chief.” My voice rang with sincerity.

  Shelton glared at me again, as if hoping for a wrong step so he could nail me for insubordination.

  “I’ve been working alone since Carter moved to Memphis,” I said. “I could wind this up faster if I had some help.”

  “I’ve pulled Adler off patrol to assist. I want both of you working around the clock on this. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” He’d done me a favor. Adler had the most potential of any street cop on the force. He’d be a help, not a hindrance, unlike others Shelton might have chosen.

  “What are you doing about these home invasions?”

  His snarling question renewed my irritation. I was on the wrong end of a kitchen-sink dressing-down. He was pissed and throwing everything he could at me.

  “In a perfect world,” I said with a sigh of genuine longing and a straight face, “all home invasions would be committed by Asian gangs, breaking into homes to complete teenagers’ math homework.”

  Shelton, who never got my brand of humor, simply blinked.

  “Anything else, Chief?” I added a saccharine dose of awed respect to my tone. He could push me all he wanted, but my infamous temper was well leashed. “I have an investigation to conduct.”

  “Keep me informed. I want a full report of your progress on my desk Monday morning. Better yet, I’d like a suspect behind bars by then.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

  I resisted the impulse to salute. Shelton knew how to push my buttons, but I’d learned to choose my battles. I consoled myself with the knowledge that he’d attained his exalted position through the Peter Principle. A better politician than cop, he’d finally reached his highest level of incompetence. Shelton had never worked the streets. He couldn’t solve a case if someone shoved the evidence under his chin and rubbed his nose in it.

  I concentrated on breathing deeply to purge the hostility from my system. The chief’s door slammed as I entered my office. He was probably on his way to the country club where he would assure his cronies that he’d read the riot act to his department. Then he’d play a leisurely round of golf while I logged the overtime.

  Adler was waiting in my office. “What’s next?”

  I jotted down the name of Wainwright’s doctor. “Check this guy out. See what he can tell you about the victim. Check his alibi for yesterday. And locate a phone company repairman, Jeff Hadley. Find out what he knows about Edith Wainwright.”

  I pocketed the keys to the Wainwright house Adler had handed me. “I’m going to search the crime scene again, in case we missed something in the dark last night.”

  “Locard’s Principle?”

  I appraised my assistant with respect. “The perp brings something to the crime scene and takes something away, according to Locard. We haven’t found what the killer, if there was a killer, left for us. Not yet.”

  Adler, dressed in plainclothes, shrugged into a leather bomber jacket. “I’ll check back here and let you know what I’ve turned up.”

  Lace curtains moved over Mrs. Eagleton’s front window when I parked on Grove Street beside the flapping yellow crime-scene tape in front of Edith’s house. Before I could climb out of my car, the neighbor emerged from her front door. She wore Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless blouse that exposed her scrawny legs and arms, tanned and weathered by age and sun. Her thong sandals slapped the pavement as she approached.

  She had removed her pink rollers, but her hair retained their shapes, lying atop her head like gray sausages that wiggled when she walked.

  I met her and continued walking toward her house, away from the crime scene.

  She turned and fell into step beside me. “Have you caught the killer yet?”

  “As I said last night, we don’t know that there was a killer.”

  “You don’t think it’s suicide?”

  “We haven’t ruled anything out yet.”

  “It wasn’t suicide.” She sounded certain.

  “Why not?”

  “The kid was too damned happy. When she left for work the other day, I was watering my azaleas in the front yard. She waved and smiled and called ‘good morning.’ Never saw a fat girl so cheerful. Why would someone so happy kill herself?”

  I kept walking until I reached the Eagleton front porch, then stopped and looked back toward Edith’s house. The side and back of her home could be seen clearly from this vantage point, but Edith’s front door was blocked by an enormous arborvitae growing beside the front porch.

  I turned to Mrs. Eagleton. “Have you thought of anything that might help the investigation?”

  “No, but I’ve alerted the neighbors, so if anyone saw anything suspicious, they know to report it.” Her smug grimace might have been a smile, but the ragged tracing of lipstick that rimmed her thin mouth made her expression hard to read.

  “I couldn’t rouse any of the neighbors last night,” I said. “Who lives on the other side of the Wainwright house?”

  “The Kolinskis, but they’re still in Chicago. They don’t come south until after Thanksgiving. And across the street are the Myerses, but they’re cruising the Bahamas until next weekend. I’m watching their house while they’re gone.” She reached into her blouse pocket, took out a pack of Camels and offered me one.

  I shook my head and studied Edith’s front door. With the other neighbors away, someone could have come and gone there and not be seen, even in broad dayli
ght. “You’ve been a great help, Mrs. Eagleton.”

  I left her basking in the sunlight on her front steps and puffing a cigarette. The woman had to be at least eighty. So much for the health hazards of smoking and too much sun.

  I ducked under the yellow tape and strode up the walk to the front door. It was flanked by jalousie windows on the right, and beneath them sat two folding aluminum chairs with frayed nylon webbing. A massive clay pot filled with ferns stood between the chairs and the door. As I approached the porch, something gold glistened among the ferns.

  Using a pencil, I snagged a piece of thin gold twine and lifted it out of the planter. The twine, its ends tied in a bow, was threaded through a plain white tag the size of a business card.

  “Congratulations, Edith, from Karen Englewood” was typed on the card. The capital E had a large nick in the bottom serif.

  “Did you find something?” Mrs. Eagleton strained against the tape along the front of the lot, trying to see what I held.

  “Just a piece of trash.”

  I dropped the twine and the card into a handkerchief and slipped them into my pocket. I’d check the rest of the house and yard before I left, but I had a feeling that I’d already found what I was looking for.

  CHAPTER 4

  The October sun beat on the brick walks when I stopped at Scallops, a sidewalk café on Main Street. After leaving the Wainwright house, I’d interviewed the elderly victims of last night’s home invasion, but they’d been unable to provide any more information than they’d already given Adler.

  A pert young waitress in short-shorts and a too-small T-shirt, with the café’s seashell logo emblazoned across her ample breasts, took my order.

  Saturday antiques-hunters crowded the street, but I paid little attention to the sunburned throngs. I sipped iced tea with lime juice, ate the house specialty of turkey breast en croissant with sliced cucumber and alfalfa sprouts, and contemplated the card I’d found on Edith Wainwright’s porch and its possible relevance to her death.