Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  Forming conclusions early in an investigation leads to pitfalls, so I concentrated only on the facts. The pristine condition of the card indicated it had been dropped recently, and the twine, in addition to the card’s congratulatory message, indicated it might have been attached to a gift of some sort. A small gift, judging by the length of the gold string.

  Chocolates laced with cyanide?

  I refused the waitress’s offer to bring dessert, although the sight of a slim young woman at the next table, plowing through a concoction of fudge brownie topped with chocolate ice cream, hot fudge sauce, whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles almost broke my resolve.

  The closer I came to fifty, the harder I had to fight to keep my weight within departmental guidelines. I didn’t dare exceed them. Shelton would get a primeval pleasure from kicking my fat fanny off the force, as an example to others.

  The drive to Karen Englewood’s, just a few short blocks from my condo, took only minutes. Windward Lane intersected Edgewater Drive, and from the street in front of the Englewood house, I spotted the multicolored sails of windsurfers on the sound. The roar of Jet Skis barreling down the channel floated toward me on the breeze.

  The day was pleasantly warm with just a hint of cooling in the wind, and the cloudless October sky shimmered a brilliant blue. Residents consider October the perfect time of year in Florida, but tourists seem unaware of the month’s charm. Motels that proclaim No Vacancies for eleven months often stand empty in October. That suited me fine. Too many tourists already, and half of them returned home only to turn around and move to Florida permanently.

  Some natives had resorted to bumper stickers, like the one I’d seen last week that read, “Welcome to Florida. Now go home.”

  All but a few dozen acres of the unending orange groves of my youth had been sold, subdivided and developed. What I remembered from childhood as sleepy country roads were now six-lane highways gridlocked with traffic. Deserted beaches where I’d played as a child were overshadowed by high-rises and thronged with people.

  God, I felt old and wondered if every generation watched their world change and disappear before their eyes.

  A woman close to my age answered the door at the Englewood address, a two-story Dutch Colonial built, like many of the homes near the waterfront, in the 1930s. Its pink stuccoed walls matched the flowers of the dwarf oleanders that lined the walkway.

  “Karen Englewood?” I flashed my badge and identification.

  “Oh, my God. It’s not Larry, is it?” The woman’s face paled, and she gripped the edge of the door as if to keep from falling.

  “Take it easy, Ms. Englewood. I’m here to ask a few questions. Nothing to do with anyone named Larry.”

  Color returned to her face in a rush. “Forgive me. Larry is my son, and I was afraid something had happened to him. Please, come in.” The woman struggled to regain her composure and stepped aside for me to enter. “We can talk in the Florida room.”

  I followed her through a dark entry hall and living room with drawn shades to a bright, glassed-in porch filled with white wicker furniture upholstered in a tropical print. Glazed pots of weeping figs and tree ferns turned the room into an indoor garden. The walls of jalousie windows, cranked open to the breeze, gave a sweeping view of the water at the street’s end.

  “You’ve lived in Florida awhile,” I said.

  “All my life. How did you know?” Karen waved me toward a wicker rocker at the end of a small sofa.

  “You called this a Florida room. Northerners would call it a sunroom or sunporch.”

  “Very observant, but then I suppose that’s your job.” She sat on the sofa, reached into a basket on the floor beside it, picked up an embroidery hoop and began stitching with a large needle and red thread. “I hope you don’t mind if I sew as we talk. I’m making Christmas presents, and Christmas will be here before you know it.”

  Karen Englewood was making a valiant if clumsy attempt to appear nonchalant, but she was obviously rattled about something. Two round spots of high color stained her cheekbones, and her hands trembled slightly as she stitched what looked like a Christmas stocking.

  She was an attractive woman, one of those enviable people with good bones who manage to look more elegant as they grow older. A streak of gray cut a wide swath through her dark, lustrous hair, adding more drama than age to her appearance. She was dressed casually in a print dress with a fashionably short divided skirt. Like those of a true Floridian, her tanned legs were bare, and her espadrilles of colored straw matched her dress.

  I felt suddenly gauche and clunky in my challis print dress, black blazer and loafers, then smiled inwardly at the turn my thoughts had taken. Twenty-two years of police work hadn’t blinded my eye to fashion.

  “I’m sorry to bother you on the weekend, Ms. Englewood, but I need some information on Edith Wainwright.”

  “Please, call me Karen.” She smiled and dropped her needlework to her lap. Her nervousness had disappeared as if with the turn of a switch at the mention of Edith’s name. “What do you need to know?”

  “What’s your relationship to Edith?”

  “She’s one of my clients.”

  “You’re a lawyer?”

  Karen laughed with an easy, pleasant sound. “I’m a counselor at the Pelican Bay Weight Management Clinic. Edith is enrolled in one of our weight-loss programs.”

  “What does your program involve?”

  “We’re connected with Pelican Bay Hospital, and Dr. Tillett—”

  “Tillett?” That was the name of the doctor I’d sent Adler to track.

  “Richard Tillett. He’s our physician in charge. All our clients are medically supervised. Most of them have serious health problems, but Edith isn’t one of them. She’s young and healthy, anxious to complete her weight loss for cosmetic reasons, although she knows the positive effects of proper weight on her future health.”

  “I’m afraid Edith’s future health won’t be an issue. She died last night.”

  The color drained from Karen’s face again. “My God, how? It wasn’t connected to her fasting regime, was it?”

  “We don’t have the complete autopsy report yet. For now, her death is considered suspicious.”

  “Suspicious? As in foul play? That’s ridiculous. Edith is one of the sweetest young women I’ve ever met. Who’d want to harm her?” Karen picked up the embroidery hoop and jabbed her needle into the fabric.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Can you think of any reason why Edith might have wanted to harm herself?”

  “Suicide?” Karen’s deep blue eyes widened, then filled with tears that spilled onto her pale cheeks.

  “We have to check out every possibility.”

  “If you’d asked me that question when Edith first came to our clinic five months ago, I’d have agreed that she had every reason to want to kill herself. She was so morbidly obese that simple everyday tasks, like bathing and dressing and getting in and out of a car, were a strain for her.”

  “What do you know about her relationships?”

  “She had no close family. She was the only child of parents who died when she was a youngster. Her grandparents raised her, but they died recently.”

  “You don’t believe she killed herself?”

  Karen shrugged. “Edith suffered the ostracism and public torment that most obese people in our society face. Prejudice against fat people is apparently the last socially acceptable bigotry in our society.” Her voice took on an evangelical fervor. “Edith was twenty-two years old. She should have been dating and going out with other young people, but she spent her life hiding, avoiding people, losing herself and her troubles in the fantasies of novels and television dramas.”

  “Sounds like a grim life.”

  “But lately she had hope. People with hope don’t commit suicide.”

  I nodded. Karen’s description of Edith matched what Mrs. Eagleton and Tonya Wilson had told me. “She was still obese, still withdrawn. Why are you so
sure she didn’t kill herself last night?”

  “She had lost fifty pounds so far on her diet. She was feeling good, very optimistic about reaching her goal. Besides, as psychologist for the group, I encourage them to call me, any hour day or night, if they have problems. Edith didn’t call, and she would have if she’d felt despondent.” She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.

  “Did Edith socialize with others in the group?” I struggled to remain objective. I liked Karen Englewood, but it was too soon to rule out suspects.

  “No, but she was well liked by everyone. She was the youngest, you see.”

  “I’d like to talk with the others. Can you tell me their names and addresses?” I pulled out my notebook.

  “Don’t bother with that.” Karen stood and crossed the room. “Give me a minute to warm up my copier and I’ll duplicate my list.”

  She returned a few minutes later and handed me a copy of a typed sheet of names and addresses.

  “That’s all?” I said. “Just seven?”

  “We keep the groups small so we can give our clients the individual attention they need.” The wicker creaked as Karen settled back on the sofa.

  “Just a couple more questions,” I said. “Do you ever give congratulatory gifts to your clients? When they’ve reached a certain point in their weight loss, for example?”

  A shadow of disgust crossed Karen’s face. “You mean Skinnerian conditioning? Absolutely not. That’s half the problem with our education system today. Makes people forget there’s reward enough in doing something well. They want to be paid for it, too. Besides, my clients are so happy to be rid of those excess pounds, any token from me would be superfluous.” She skewered her Christmas stocking again.

  I flinched in sympathy for the sock and wondered if it was her surrogate for B. F. Skinner.

  “One more question, then I’ll be out of your way. Where were you between five and seven o’clock last night?”

  At home, I punched the playback on my answering machine, and a deep male voice spoke. “Margaret, give me a call when you get in. I have a proposition for you.”

  I dialed Bill Malcolm’s number and pictured him stretched out on the sofa in the lounge of his cabin cruiser, watching the University of Florida Gators football game on his tiny television.

  “Margaret,” he answered. “I’m glad you’re home in time. How about a sunset cruise to Clearwater Beach and supper at Frenchy’s?”

  “You must be psychic. I need to talk to you. What time?”

  “As soon as you can make it. You sound tired. You okay?”

  “Nothing catching a killer won’t solve. I’ll fill you in when I get there.”

  I changed into white slacks, a navy pullover and white canvas deck shoes and remembered Karen Englewood’s elegant appearance. And her stumbling efforts to explain her whereabouts at the time Edith Wainwright died.

  Karen claimed she’d had a quiet supper alone at home and had worked on her embroidery while she watched the television news, but she was a poor liar. Her hands had trembled, and she hadn’t looked me in the eyes, not even when she said goodbye. Lying didn’t automatically make her a killer, but it did place her on the list of suspects.

  List? Who was I kidding? Karen Englewood at this point was my only suspect, and not a very good one. I had compared the typed list of clinic clients to the card I’d found on Edith’s porch, but the type fonts didn’t match. I hadn’t expected them to. Most people sign their names to gift cards. The fact that Karen’s had been typed indicated someone else had used her name. Unless Karen had typed it, hoping that’s what others would believe.

  Almost twenty-four hours had passed since Edith’s death. My window of opportunity for nabbing a killer was narrowing. From everything I’d learned from Mrs. Eagleton, Tonya Wilson and Karen Englewood, I would bet my pension I was looking at murder. But I still had no idea who had killed Edith. Or why.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bill was waiting to cast off when I arrived at the marina. Saturday boaters, including parents with tired, crying children, sunburned and sand-crusted, crowded the dock. Several crews of deep-sea charter boats unloaded coolers, hosed down decks and secured lines.

  I worked my way through the crowd to Bill’s thirty-eight-foot cabin cruiser in the slip at the westernmost end of the dock. Ten-Ninety-Eight, police-radio code for “assignment completed,” painted in bright red flowing cursive on the boat’s stern, brought the usual smile to my face.

  High tide made boarding easy, and I scaled the ladder to the flying bridge and sank into a swivel chair bolted to the deck next to Bill at the controls. He grinned but didn’t attempt to speak over the thrust of the powerful engines. He slowly backed the boat from its slip into the channel that led to the sound, guided it into the Intracoastal Waterway and headed south toward Clearwater Beach.

  On the western horizon, the sun slipped behind the tree line of Caladesi Island. The cloudless sky was deepening from a pale, watery blue-green to dusty rose. By the time we docked at the bayside motel owned by a friend of Bill’s, the sky glowed tangerine.

  “Volcanic dust,” Bill said. “Makes for great sunsets.”

  He secured the lines and we walked two short blocks to Frenchy’s, a rustic open-air restaurant with wooden picnic tables and the best grouper sandwiches on the beach.

  While we ate fish and coleslaw and chugged a pitcher of draft beer, I gave Bill the facts of Edith Wainwright’s death, careful not to color the narration with my own reactions.

  “What do you think?” I said when I’d finished. I wiped tartar sauce from the corner of my mouth with a paper napkin.

  Bill ordered key lime pie and coffee and waited until the waitress had cleared our plates before he answered. “No sign of where the poison came from, no suicide note, upbeat attitude of the deceased, assuming she wasn’t manic-depressive. Sounds like homicide, but it’s not conclusive. You don’t have enough data yet.”

  “I still have six members of her diet group to interview. Adler’s tracking down her doctor and a co-worker she had the hots for. Maybe they’ll tell us something that will nail it down.”

  “Autopsy done?”

  “Cyanide by ingestion. No other signs of trauma or illness. Sheesh, I hate murder. I’m getting too old for this.”

  Bill reached over and took my hand. “Give it up, Margaret. Your pension’s vested, your condo’s paid for. Retire, like I did.”

  I squeezed his hand, then released it and picked up my coffee cup. “And do what? I’d go crazy in a week.”

  “You could move in with me. We’ll take another trip to the Bahamas, like last year. Hell, we could tour the whole Caribbean.”

  His voice was teasing, and I couldn’t tell if there was an undercurrent of sincerity in his offer. His proposals of cohabitation and marriage had been a running joke in our relationship. But Bill had also lived a bachelor’s existence for more than twenty years, the last two on his boat, and he seemed perfectly content with his single state. A part of me longed for him to be serious about marriage, but an equal part feared any change in our relationship might jeopardize our friendship and the comfortable limbo we both enjoyed.

  “You know I could never live on a boat,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t love being on the water like you do. I’d rather view it from a distance from the balcony of my condo.”

  We’d had this conversation before, and this time wouldn’t be the last. It had become a ritual, a never-ending pseudo-mating dance between two people who’d been burned too badly to risk commitment again, but who couldn’t abandon hope completely.

  “There’s another option,” Bill said.

  I arched my eyebrows in question.

  “You could put that degree in library science to use. The Pelican Bay Library would hire you. With your police experience, think of all the overdue books you could track down.”

  “I might just try that,” I lied, then laughed at the startled look on his face.

  The station, a low, modern b
uilding nestled beneath live oaks on the edge of a downtown park, looked more like a library or doctor’s clinic with its tropical landscaping and tiled entryways. The second shift was leaving as I pulled my car beneath the soft sodium lights of the parking lot.

  Chief Shelton’s slot was empty. He and his wife, Myra, a bleached-blond bimbo with an IQ in the double digits, attended the country club dance every Saturday night.

  Adler met me in my office. “Finally got hold of Tillett’s wife. The doctor’s at a medical conference in Boca Raton. Won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “And Hadley?”

  He consulted his notes. “He didn’t know Edith Wainwright.”

  “That’s odd. He worked with her, and Tonya Wilson said the two conversed by phone almost every day.” I settled behind my desk and opened Edith’s file.

  “He said he only knew her by voice. Never met her.”

  I doodled on a notepad. “How did you read him?”

  “I think he was telling the truth. When I told him she was dead, he didn’t react much. But when I described her, his mouth fell open. He admitted he’d seen her before, ‘waddling through the parking lot’ was how he put it, but he hadn’t known who she was.”

  “Alibi?”

  He tossed a business card from the Blue Jay Sports Bar onto my desk. “Bartender verified Hadley and three of his friends came in before five on Friday and stayed until after nine.”

  I sighed. The more I knew, the less I knew. “And the good doctor?”

  “Flew to Boca Raton Friday morning. Checked into the Boca Raton Club and Resort before noon, according to the desk clerk. He remembered the doctor’s room wasn’t ready.” Adler twisted his head from side to side, as if to ease the tension in his neck. “Anything else you want done tonight?”

  “Get some rest.” I scratched an itch on the tip of my nose with the pencil eraser. If I didn’t hook a substantial lead soon, I’d have a full-fledged case of hives. “But first thing in the morning, find out what you can about the doctor’s whereabouts after he checked in. He could easily drive here from Boca in four hours.”