Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  “Don’t let me interrupt your program,” I said.

  “I fell asleep during Sixty Minutes…” His voice trailed away as he rummaged beneath the counter in the galley and came up with two icy bottles of Michelob. He twisted off the tops and filled two pilsner glasses.

  I settled deeper into the cushions and let the gentle motion of the boat rock me. Two murders within forty-eight hours had me wound tighter than a kid’s toy, and it would take more than a beer to relax me. I doubted a sledgehammer would do the job.

  Bill handed me a glass and placed a bowl of salted nuts on the cushion between us. “I heard about the Morelli murder on the radio. You’ve had a helluva weekend.”

  “That’s not the half of it.” I sipped the chilled brew and nibbled peanuts, trying not to count calories or fat grams.

  He studied my face with a piercing look. “Your mother?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Whenever you two have it out, you get these tight little lines around the corners of your mouth. Like a lockjaw victim.” He reached over and stroked my face with his thumb and index finger, making me smile.

  “Probably psychological. I tighten up to keep from telling her off.”

  He grinned back. “Tell her off. It might do you good.”

  “I’d only create more tension. Besides, she’s as frustrated with our relationship as I am. She probably thinks I’m a changeling, switched at birth, and that somewhere in the world, a perfect daughter who does all the right things—wears the right clothes, attends the proper parties, marries the perfect man—is pining for her real mother.”

  “Sounds like your sister.”

  His perception had made him an excellent investigator. “At least Caroline followed the script—married a socially prominent wealthy man, had two exemplary children who’ve provided Mother with four perfect great-grandchildren. Caroline’s even chairing the art show this year to raise money for Mother’s favorite charity—”

  “Margaret, if you clutch that glass any tighter, it’s going to shatter in your hand.”

  I released my death grip on the pilsner glass. “Mother’s been this way all my life, so why is she driving me crazy now?”

  “Maybe because you’ve got a double homicide on your hands?” He massaged the back of my neck.

  Lured by those hands and his exceptional culinary skills, I could settle for a life with Bill. The million-dollar question was whether he’d want me. I’d assumed his proposals had been made in jest, but I was too afraid to ask, so I’d probably never know.

  “I’ve had homicides before. But now I’m staring down the barrel of age fifty and realizing Mother—and I—are never going to change.”

  Bill moved the bowl of peanuts and pulled me closer. “You abandoned her world when you signed up for the academy. She can’t begin to understand what your life is like. Don’t hold it against her.”

  “You’re right. Even though she’s thirty-four years older than me, she’s never worked a fatal traffic accident or had to deal with murder.” I snuggled back against his broad chest. “Only another cop can truly understand what we deal with day to day.”

  “Remember Fernandez, who worked homicide in Tampa?”

  I nodded. Fernandez had retired early with posttraumatic stress disorder. He’d begun waking in the middle of the night to find the victims from his cases sitting at the foot of his bed, demanding to know if he’d caught their killers. None of us had asked whether or not six years of retirement had banished the ghosts. We were afraid to know.

  “How about a walk?” Bill said. “I’ve been a couch potato all day.”

  He tugged on a windbreaker, locked up the boat and hoisted me to the dock. We entered the park that bordered the marina and turned south on the path that paralleled the waterfront.

  “The scuzzballs are out already.” Bill nodded toward a bearded man, dressed in faded army fatigues and leaning against the wall of the public rest rooms.

  I recognized Lenny Jacobs, working undercover vice, but gave no sign of acknowledgment. I didn’t know who might be watching.

  We strolled along the bay, watched the night herons skitter among the tidal flats, and listened to the calls of screech owls and a chuck-will’s-widow. An ambulance passed, lights flashing and siren silent, headed for Clearwater. Except for an occasional jogger and a couple walking their dog, we were alone in the night. I brought Bill up to speed on all that had happened since our supper at Frenchy’s the night before. It seemed like weeks ago.

  When we reached the mouth of Stevenson Creek where it emptied into the sound, we turned back toward Pelican Bay and chose a bench beneath a massive cedar, its trunk gnarled and twisted by the onshore winds. Across the sound, the lights of Clearwater and Pelican Beaches twinkled like a Christmas display.

  “When I talked with Karen Englewood tonight,” I said, “she seemed convinced we’re dealing with a psychopathic killer, but I can’t tell whether she really believes that or is trying to divert attention from her son.”

  “You’ve just given me the facts, ma’am,” Bill said in his Joe Friday voice. “What do your instincts tell you?”

  “That everyone I’ve talked to is hiding something. That the killer could be any one of them or some faceless psycho working in a vitamin factory in Ohio.”

  “Didn’t you say that Mick Rafferty came up empty on the vitamins?”

  “He only had time this afternoon to check the pills collected from Morelli and the five surviving group members. All tested clean. I’ll know tomorrow about the other vitamins from Tillett’s office.”

  “Anyone working this case besides you and Adler?”

  I kicked a pinecone from beneath the bench and sent it twirling down the bluff into a tidal pool. “Shelton had already cut CID by two detectives before Carter moved to Memphis. Now Adler and I make up the entire division. Not that I have any love for Shelton, but it’s not his fault. The city council’s looking for ways to save money. They’ve been on his back to cut costs.”

  Bill uttered a string of curses that would have sent my hoity-toity mother into cardiac arrest. “Those number crunchers can’t tell their asses from holes in the ground. Almost every other community in the country is pumping up police presence and initiating community policing to reduce crime and guard against terrorism, and these pinheads want to cut our police force?”

  “It looks good on paper and saves them from raising taxes, the ultimate in political self-preservation.”

  “God, what idiots.”

  I sat back and enjoyed the spectacle of Bill Malcolm in a rage. I’d seen the awe-inspiring display only twice before, the first time when Tricia divorced him, the second when I left the Tampa PD for Pelican Bay.

  His anger ebbed as he exhausted his earthy vocabulary. “How do you expect to solve homicides with only you and Adler on this case, not to mention the rest of your caseload?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll do the best I can. What choice do I have?”

  “Let me help.”

  Bill had been one of the best homicide detectives in the Tampa department. But there’d been a time when I’d wondered if he’d reach retirement or a nervous breakdown first. Retirement had won, and I didn’t want to place him back on the firing line. “I don’t know—”

  He grasped my shoulders and twisted me to face him. Moonlight lit the planes of his face and highlighted the stubborn set of his jaw. “You said you’re afraid the killer may strike again, that there’re five more at risk in the group from the clinic. At least let me drive to Boca Raton and check out Tillett’s alibi.”

  The darkness couldn’t hide the glint in his eyes or the eagerness in his voice, a sign of the same love/hate of police work that I felt myself.

  “God knows, I can use the help with Boca,” I admitted. “But I’m not committing to anything more. Understood?”

  He rose and pulled me to my feet. “Perfectly. Commitment of any kind has always scared the crap out of you.”

  His words hit closer to ho
me than I cared to admit. I wanted commitment but was terrified it wouldn’t take. “We’re such good friends. Why spoil that friendship by making a commitment out of it?”

  With a sigh of frustration, he shook his head and changed the subject. “I’ll leave for the East Coast tonight.”

  I had to run to keep up with him all the way back to the marina.

  Bill had been in Boca for hours when I reached my office at seven-thirty the next morning. I’d had one beer and six hours’ sleep the night before, but my body insisted I’d been on a four-day binge. Stiff and sore, with eyelids like sandpaper, I pitied the first person to cross my path.

  Adler caught the brunt. He bounded into the office as energized as if he’d come off three weeks’ leave. “Thanks for stopping by yesterday. Jessica loves her book. I’ve read it to her so many times, I’ve memorized it.”

  “What have you got on Wainwright?”

  He recoiled at the snap in my voice, and a flush darkened his face and the tips of his ears. “I located her only surviving relative, a ninety-year-old uncle in a nursing home in Michigan.”

  “Whoa, the kid was only twenty-two. How can she have an uncle who’s ninety?”

  “A great-uncle. She was raised by her grandparents. Her parents died in a plane crash in Chicago in 1989, and Edith came here to live.”

  “What about a will?”

  “Haven’t located one yet, but even if I do, the uncle says there’re no assets. Edith had to mortgage the house to pay the old couple’s medical bills and to bury them.”

  Orphaned, socially outcast by her obesity, poor, and now murdered. Nobody deserved all that. The skin on the backs of my hands and my upper arms itched angrily. I’d be soaking in oatmeal baths before this case was closed.

  “Bill Malcolm’s gone to Boca to check out Tillett’s alibi,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah?” There were a thousand questions in his eyes, but none I wanted to answer.

  “He misses the job,” I said in my most neutral voice. “Likes to keep his hand in now and then.”

  Adler nodded with a look that said he knew I was sidestepping. He sat in the chair behind what had been Carter’s desk and locked his fingers behind his head. “I’ve got a funny feeling about Tillett.”

  “Everyone connected to this case gives me a funny feeling.” I dug my hands into my pockets to keep from scratching.

  “Tillett has motive for Sophia’s murders,” Adler said. “A million big ones, and opportunity, through access to the vitamin supplies. If his alibi doesn’t hold up—”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” The irritation in my skin transferred to my voice. “Let’s wait for Bill’s report. Have you located Dorman?”

  Adler stood and ripped a page off the notepad on the desk. “I’m on my way now to check out his last known address.”

  “I’ll need your help at five today with the interviews of Tillett’s staff and patients. You can meet me at his clinic.”

  “Sure.” He paused in the doorway. “While you’re there, maybe the doctor can give you something for that rash.”

  He circled his face with his finger and pointed toward me before taking off.

  I jumped from my chair with the alacrity of a much younger woman and sprinted down the hall to the rest room. The mirror confirmed Adler’s observation. Angry red blotches covered my face. I shoved up my sleeves. My arms were enveloped in spots as well. A persistent itching beneath my panty hose confirmed the welts had spread to my legs.

  Cold compresses of the department’s industrial-strength paper towels eased the inflammation on my face, but the rest of me was in agony, my worst eruption since right before I’d left the Tampa department.

  I’d visited a dermatologist then, convinced I’d contracted some rare exotic disease while patrolling the docks of the Port of Tampa. The doctor had assured me it was only hives, probably stress-related. He’d been right about the stress. Three young girls under the age of twelve had been murdered in the city that year, and the entire department was on alert. Two years later, the killer was still on the loose, and I’d decided I’d had enough of murder. That’s when I decided to transfer to the small-town department of Pelican Bay to lessen my chances of having to deal with homicides.

  I suppressed a grunt of disgust. I could run from murder but I couldn’t hide.

  I returned to my desk, scrawled an address from my files and hurried to my car. At the Apothecary Shop—a common drugstore in Pelican Bay’s chic antiques district would be heresy—I bought calamine lotion and Benadryl. A female pharmacist in her early twenties rang up my purchases.

  “Wow.” She shoved her chewing gum to one cheek to speak. “That’s the worst case of urticaria I’ve seen.”

  She hadn’t lived long enough to see much.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s worse than it looks.”

  At home, I stripped off black gabardine slacks and a red silk blouse and slathered calamine lotion over my face and body, dressed again minus panty hose, and gulped down a megadose of Benadryl. The agony had eased slightly by the time I’d climbed back into my car and turned toward Clearwater.

  The changes in the town depressed me. Once a bustling little city with a beautiful waterfront, its downtown had withered for years.

  I parked on a side street and entered a mostly deserted building. On the third floor, I traveled a dark hallway to an office that overlooked the alley. Facts, Inc., was the brainchild of Archer Phillips, an old high school classmate of mine. Archer, the Mario Andretti of the information superhighway, had turned his computer skills into a thriving business that searched records of all kinds, primarily for insurance companies and private investigators.

  The Pelican Bay PD seldom used his services. Complete background checks on individuals ran as high as a couple of thousand dollars, and the department was too strapped to lay out that kind of cash. What Archer could locate in days would take a couple of detectives months to uncover. I couldn’t wait months.

  I resisted the urge to rake my nails down my itching arms for quick relief before opening the door. Not only did I hope to avoid further deaths by bringing these latest cases to a close quickly; in a very literal way, I was saving my own skin.

  A desiccated little woman with thinning gray hair pulled back in a knot sat behind the reception desk. She studied me over the gold wire frames of her glasses. “Margaret Skerritt, I almost didn’t recognize you. My, how you’ve changed.”

  “Age does that to us all, Mrs. Phillips. Is Archer in?”

  “Yes…”

  I could see the wheels turning behind her watery eyes and sensed her dilemma. She was wondering which would be worse for her beloved son, an official visit from law enforcement or a personal one from an unmarried former classmate. Archer had spent almost fifty years under his mother’s thumb. I found a small degree of comfort in the fact that someone’s relationship with his mother was worse than mine.

  “Can I tell him what this is about?”

  “Sure. I need information.”

  She hesitated as if wanting to ask more, then shrugged her bony shoulders and disappeared through a door behind her desk. When she returned, Archer followed her.

  “Margaret, good to see you!”

  Archer’s greeting was too hearty, and he almost tripped on his small feet in his hurry to usher me into his office and close the door. He motioned me toward a chair in front of his desk and settled his pear-shaped bulk behind it. He forced his thick lips into a smile, and I wondered if the genetic marker for genius carried ugliness as well.

  “What’s this all about?” Apprehension glittered in his tiny eyes.

  “I have two potential homicide suspects. I need the works on them. ASAP. Employment history, assets and liabilities, criminal and driving records, anything you can find.”

  “That’s what I do best.” He smoothed his pink guayabera over his paunch, then punched the keys on his desk calculator. “I figure about fifteen hundred apiece. Do I bill the department?”

&n
bsp; “No bill. I’m calling in my debt.”

  “That’s blackmail—”

  The door to the outer office swung open, and Mrs. Phillips entered with a tray. She placed it on Archer’s desk and handed me coffee in a dainty cup and saucer. “Did you say blackmail?” she asked.

  I accepted the sugar bowl she offered and stirred in three mounds from a silver spoon. Archer’s cup rattled in its saucer. He’d begun to sweat.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Police business. It’s confidential.”

  When she’d returned to the front office and closed the door, he slammed his cup and saucer on the desktop, sloshing coffee over the papers scattered there. “You can’t do this, Margaret.”

  I gritted my teeth. Pushing people around wasn’t my idea of a good time, but I needed information fast.

  “I have a list of seven people. Two on that list have already been murdered. If my partner and I have to gather the facts we need, the other five may be dead before we’re finished.”

  “But I can’t afford—”

  “You can afford that condo in Pelican Bay, a nice little love nest I’m sure your mama has no knowledge of. I’d hate to disillusion her about her devoted Archer.”

  I’d stumbled across Archer’s condo and his regular visits to the woman who lived there during the stakeout of a drug dealer two years ago. When Archer spotted me, he’d begged me never to say anything to his mother. I’d agreed, with the stipulation that he might return the favor by providing information for me in the future.

  He pulled a large handkerchief from the pocket of his polyester slacks and ran it over his perspiring bald dome. “You can’t tell her. Her heart, it could kill her.”

  Mrs. Phillips had the look of a woman who might live forever, but I had no intention of revealing Archer’s secret life. The poor guy deserved whatever pleasure he could get. And I deserved a break on this case.

  “Just get me the information I need.” I wrote Richard Tillett and Lester Morelli on my notepad, ripped off the top sheet and handed it across the desk. “You can donate your fee to the department and deduct it from your income tax.”

  “It’ll take some time.”