Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  I envied his youth and optimism, squelched a surge of maternal affection and braced myself to face Mother’s displeasure as I headed toward the yacht club.

  CHAPTER 10

  When I pulled into the entrance of the yacht club, a teenage valet opened my car door. I tossed him my keys, grabbed the gift-wrapped book on the front seat and hurried inside. I was an hour late.

  Twin Waterford chandeliers, suspended from the cathedral ceiling of the lobby, cast subdued lighting on the polished oak floors, Oriental carpets and a trestle table bearing a floral arrangement the size of a Volkswagen Bug. Whispers, discreet laughter and the muffled clink of sterling flatware against bone china drifted from the adjacent dining room.

  A hatchet-faced hostess in black silk and pearls greeted me, and I suppressed the automatic reflex of flashing my badge. “Mrs. Skerritt’s party, please.”

  She gave me a head-to-toe glance, and disapproval flicked across her heavily powdered face before she turned toward the dining room. “This way.”

  I followed her stiff back through the dimly lighted dining room and out double doors onto the terrace. I’ve faced homicidal maniacs, drug-crazed killers and reckless juveniles who’d as soon shoot a cop as breathe, but nothing unnerved me as much as these social elite, gussied up and gathered on their own turf. Their cool, sliding glances carried a punch heftier than a blow to the gut.

  Worst of all was the same look in my mother’s eyes. She watched me approach her table that overlooked sand dunes and moonlit Gulf on the terrace’s far end. For eighty-two, the old girl looked fantastic—thick white hair pulled back by a black satin bow, and a white silk blouse with a Mandarin collar and flowing sleeves beneath a black tunic. The Queen of England couldn’t have looked more elegant. Or more intimidating.

  My father had been both bridge and buffer between my mother and me, but after his death, a chasm had opened, deep, wide and dangerous. The pinched look around her mouth told me it was going to be a rough evening.

  “You’re late, Margaret. We’ve already ordered.” Diamond rings flashed on her slender fingers as she motioned to an empty seat opposite her at the round table, and I slid into it. The centerpiece of stargazer lilies, Mother’s favorite, blocked me from her view.

  A waiter appeared at my elbow, and I ordered a vodka and tonic and the catch of the day.

  Caroline sat on Mother’s right, composed and classy in an ecru designer dress that matched the ash-blond tones of her shoulder-length hair. Eight years my senior, Caroline was no more blond than I was, and only weekly trips to the hairdresser and liberal applications of L’Oréal produced the golden illusion.

  On Mother’s left, Caroline’s stodgy husband, Huntington Yarborough, fawned over his mother-in-law. His insurance agency, the largest in Clearwater, produced the necessary income to support Caroline’s expensive tastes. My niece, Michelle, a carbon copy of her mother, sipped champagne between her father and her husband, Chad, next to me.

  “Where are the kids?” I whispered to him.

  “Home with a sitter. Too solemn an occasion for strained peas or a colicky baby.” He grinned, but his eyes reflected the agony of a fellow sufferer.

  Mother shifted in her chair to eye me around the lilies. “Margaret, meet Cedric Langford. He rushed back from polo in West Palm just for my birthday.”

  The stranger on my left, athletic and tanned with distinguished gray hair and the horse-faced looks of an aristocrat, spoke in clipped British tones. “Your mother’s spoken often of you.”

  Experience told me Cedric was unattached and available and that Mother was matchmaking again. My skin protested with a new surge of misery. The Benadryl wasn’t working. When the waiter placed my drink before me, I finished half of it in a gulp.

  As the alcohol began its anesthetizing task, fragments of conversation floated around me.

  “We’ve almost made it through another hurricane season,” Hunt said.

  “I’m not worried,” Mother said. “I’ve lived here over seventy years without experiencing a major one. I doubt we’ll be blown away in my lifetime.”

  “Mother, Hal Stowers has donated his latest painting for auction at the art show.” Caroline’s self-satisfied voice cut through the fog in my brain.

  “Wonderful,” Mother gushed. “You do know how to bring out the best, dear.”

  I tuned the chatter out. Nobody asked what I’d been doing, and I didn’t volunteer. Mother didn’t consider crime, especially murder, a fit topic for dinner conversation. I ate broiled snapper silently and sipped chardonnay. By the time the plates had been removed, I battled drooping lids and bit my lower lip to keep from yawning.

  “Here’s a little something from Hunt and me.” Caroline presented Mother with a small box wrapped in silver paper. “Happy birthday, darling.”

  I’d poured over art books at Barnes & Noble and finally selected a coffee-table volume of Monet prints with accompanying color photographs of the places he’d painted. I nudged Chad and handed him the book to pass down the table. “Happy birthday, Mother.”

  Mother adored Monet, but as I watched her open Caroline’s present, I again took a back seat to my sister.

  “Sweetheart, how marvelous.” Mother lifted a ruby-and-diamond pin in the shape of a lily from its velvet box and pinned it to her tunic. “It’s perfect. Where did you find such a treasure?”

  “St. Armand’s Circle. You know how I love to shop there.” Caroline beamed in triumph across the table.

  “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping,” I muttered. I loved my sister, but I had about as much in common with her as a Samurai warrior. We might as well have been born on different planets.

  Mother slit the tape on the William Morris wrapping and uncovered my gift. “How thoughtful, Margaret. Thank you.”

  She leafed briefly through a page or two and set it aside.

  Caroline leaned toward Cedric. “Margaret loves books. She has her master’s degree in library science.”

  “Are you a librarian?” Cedric asked.

  I could tell his question sprang more from politeness than from interest, but I answered, anyway. “No, actually, I’m—”

  “How absolutely gorgeous!” Mother clapped her hands with delight as the waiter carried in a tiered cake. So many candles encircled each layer, if we’d been inside, the smoke alarms would have sounded.

  I finished the last of my wine while the others sang “Happy Birthday.” I have a voice like a parrot being fried alive, and out of concern for the others, remained silent. I set down my glass, and the sounds around me ebbed as my eyelids closed.

  “Margaret?” Mother’s voice penetrated the darkness.

  I awoke to discover my cheek pressed against the wool shoulder of Cedric’s blazer. Too late I remembered the sedative effects of Benadryl mixed with alcohol. I sat up quickly and brushed without effect at the streak of calamine on Cedric’s coat.

  “Sorry, I’ve had a long day.”

  “Perhaps Cedric will drive you home, dear.” Mother smiled benevolently around the lilies. “Chad can follow in your car, and Michelle can pick him up at your place.”

  I’d played right into her matchmaking hands, so thoroughly I could see no way out. “We’ll finish dessert first, Mother. I wouldn’t dream of leaving your party early.”

  My Benadryl-befuddled brain churned sluggishly, searching for a way to rid myself of the handsome and eminently eligible polo player without offending him or my mother. I took tiny bites of cake in an attempt to delay the inevitable.

  My procrastination was rewarded when the attractive young waiter leaned past me to fill Cedric’s coffee cup, and I observed the deep, sultry look that passed between them. My very proper and ultraconservative mother would have a conniption fit if she learned she’d set me up with a gay man.

  Cedric drove me home, but after walking me to the door, he sprinted back to his Ferrari, no doubt for a liaison with the yacht club waiter. Chad parked my Volvo in its reserved space beneath the carport
and waved goodbye before climbing in with Michelle and taking off.

  I started a pot of coffee brewing while I took a warm shower to soothe my skin, then dressed in jeans, a pullover and sneakers. I was clipping my badge and holster to my belt when my doorbell rang.

  Bill Malcolm, looking dapper and delicious in a blue blazer, gray slacks and immaculate deck shoes, stood on my doorstep. He pointed to the gun on my belt. “You coming or going?”

  “I was heading for the station, but I can wait. Come in.”

  “I just got in from Boca.” He lifted his head and sniffed. “Do I smell coffee?”

  “Fresh pot. Want some?”

  He followed me into the kitchen and leaned against the counter while I filled two mugs.

  “Why the fancy duds?” I asked. “A heavy date?”

  “Most of the heavies around here are turning up dead.” The skin around his blue eyes crinkled. “But the clothes did help me fit in at the Boca Resort. Do you have anything to eat in this seldom-used room allegedly called a kitchen?”

  I tossed him a half-full bag of chocolate chip cookies. “Any luck in Boca?”

  He strolled into my living room with the ease of a frequent visitor and folded his lanky frame into an armchair. “This case is really getting to you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s just a case like any other murder case.” I guzzled coffee, hoping the caffeine would counteract the effect of the booze and Benadryl.

  “You don’t fool me, Margaret. You haven’t had hives like this since we went after that guy in Tampa who was icing kids and dumping their bodies in the bay. But even with that gunk on your face, you’re still gorgeous.”

  I’d recently checked my bathroom mirror, but it wasn’t polite to call him a liar to his face. “What about Tillett’s alibi?”

  Bill drew a small notebook from his inside coat pocket and flipped the pages. “I started with the airline. Tillett flew in and out of Boca when he said he did. On arrival, he took the resort’s limousine from the airport. The desk clerk confirmed he checked in right before noon on Friday. Like the clerk told Adler, he remembered because the doctor raised a stink when his room wasn’t ready.”

  “After that?”

  “After that, we got a problem. I checked with maids, bellmen, concierge, desk clerks, the golf and tennis pros, Maintenance, you name it. No one remembered seeing Tillett leave his room or the hotel.”

  “Can anyone verify he was actually in his room the whole time?”

  “Nope. You said Tillett swears he didn’t leave his room from Friday noon until Saturday for the seminar’s morning meeting, and I can’t find anyone to contradict him, but—” He popped an entire cookie into his mouth and chewed.

  I waited, trying not to scratch.

  Bill washed the cookie down with coffee and examined his notes. “The clerk who checked him in said Tillett asked him to hold all his calls. The doctor collected his messages Saturday morning.”

  “That would fit,” I said. “He claimed he went to Boca early to work on his speech, so he probably didn’t want to be interrupted.”

  “Maybe. But I can’t find any evidence he was there. He made no calls from the phone in his room, ordered nothing from room service, used nothing from the minibar.”

  “If Tillett came back to the West Coast, he’d probably have rented a car.”

  Bill nodded. “I checked out rental-car agencies, too, but no one remembers anyone fitting Tillett’s description renting a car for such a short period and putting that much mileage on it.”

  “All of which proves nothing. If Tillett’s our killer, he could have planted the poison in Edith and Sophia’s vitamins and waited for them to take them. He didn’t have to be in town when it happened. It’s bad luck we weren’t able to pinpoint the vitamins as the source of cyanide when Edith died. Maybe we could have saved Sophia.”

  Bill stretched and yawned. Fatigue made him look older than his age.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  “Some help. I turned up nada.”

  “Maybe. Time will tell.” But I was running out of time.

  Bill’s head fell back against the top of the chair back, and he began to snore softly. Watching him, I felt a peculiar stinging behind my eyelids. It couldn’t be tears. A cop can’t be a slave to emotion, and I hadn’t cried since my father died. The sensation was probably a side effect from my allergies. I propped Bill’s feet on a hassock, covered him with an afghan and planted a kiss on his forehead before turning out the lights as I left.

  Coffee, they say, doesn’t sober you up. It just makes you wide-awake drunk. That’s how I felt as I drove to the station after leaving Bill snoozing in my living room. Pelican Bay had a high percentage of retirees who hit the sheets early, so the post-midnight streets were quiet and deserted. As I crossed the trail, I glimpsed a dark silhouette on its path. Many flouted the sundown closing regulations, so the shadow could have been a cat burglar or an insomniac walking his dog.

  When I entered the CID office, Adler sat hunched over his desk, pecking at his sticky keyboard. With the current department budget crunch, new computers had been scratched from this year’s budget. Adler’s sandy hair stood in peaks, as if he’d spent the evening running his fingers through it and coaxing it on end.

  “You still here?” I asked.

  “I was just leaving you some notes.” He handed me the page the printer spit out.

  “I have a few reports to type myself. Bill came in from Boca tonight. Tillett’s alibi is a wash. We can’t prove or disprove.”

  Adler’s satisfied grin predicted good news. “I kept drawing blanks on Dorman’s address, until I remembered Tillett said he’s a bodybuilder. Tonight I called every health club and gym in the yellow pages until I hit the Body Shop on U.S. 19, north of the mall. Dorman works out there seven days a week.”

  “Was he there when you called?”

  Adler shook his head. “It was late and the gym was closing, but the manager furnished an interesting piece of news. Dorman’s new place of employment. He’s working as a waiter until he lands another med-tech job.”

  The look on Adler’s face reminded me of Jessica’s when she’d opened her bunny book. “Are you going to tell me or do I have to take you into the back room and beat it out of you with a rubber hose?”

  “Dorman’s working at Sophia’s.”

  “For Lester Morelli?”

  “Yeah. Whaddaya make of that?” Adler ran his fingers through his hair, realigning the vertical tufts.

  “Coincidence?”

  “You don’t believe in coincidences, remember?” He slipped his jacket off the back of his chair and pulled it on. “I’m going home for a few hours’ sleep. You want me to question Dorman in the morning?”

  “I’d planned to interview the staff at Sophia’s tomorrow, so I’ll catch Dorman then. How about running up to Tarpon Springs and checking out Anastasia Gianakis, Vasily’s widow. There was bad blood between her husband and Sophia Morelli. I want to know how bad.”

  When Adler left, I sat at my desk and began pounding out accounts of my interviews with Tillett’s patients and staff and Bill’s findings in Boca Raton. By 3:00 a.m., both coffee and Benadryl had worn off. I wandered back to the processing room, located an empty holding cell and stretched out on the metal bunk. If I hadn’t been too tired to scratch, my hives would have kept me awake.

  Someone flicked on the overhead fluorescent light and awakened me. Darcy Wilkins stood in the doorway. “The chief wants to see you, on the double.”

  I glanced at my watch—6:45 a.m. “The chief never comes in before nine.”

  “He’s here now, and he’s not happy. If I were you, girl, I’d haul—”

  “I’m coming.”

  I stumbled on stiff legs to the locker room, splashed cold water on my face, brushed my teeth so I wouldn’t slay the chief with my first exhalation, and ran a comb through the hair flattened on one side of my head. Shelton had been in a royal snit when Edith Wainwright was murdere
d. Sophia Morelli’s demise probably had him frothing at the mouth. I approached his office with trepidation.

  The chief sat with his elbows propped on his desk and held his head in his hands. When he glanced up, he looked worse than I felt. His gray Brooks Brothers suit, red power tie and immaculate dress shirt couldn’t counteract the devastation on his face.

  “Sit down, Skerritt.” He waved me into a chair across from his desk. “Coffee?”

  The sight of Shelton playing gracious host unnerved me even more than his appearance. I accepted coffee in a china mug embossed with the PBPD logo and waited.

  The chief settled back in his chair. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here so early, dressed to the nines?”

  “The Morelli murder?” I braced for the brunt of his legendary temper.

  “Partly. But that’s not the worst of it.”

  I nodded and sipped my coffee, still expecting an explosion.

  “The city council met last night,” he said in a toneless voice. “Councilman Ulrich presented a proposal, designed to ease the city budget crunch by several million dollars.”

  “That’s good. It’ll take the pressure off the department to cut back.”

  “Under Ulrich’s proposal, there won’t be a department. He wants the city to contract police protection through the county sheriff’s office. I’ve called a press conference for ten o’clock to comment on the proposal.”

  Stunned, I simply looked at him. If the city disbanded the department, I could retire and walk away, but Darcy, Steve Johnson, Lenny Jacobs, Adler, who’d just bought a house, what would happen to them and the others if their jobs disappeared? “What’s the beef? Doesn’t Ulrich think we’re doing our jobs?”

  Shelton swiped a palm over his bald head, and the weariness in the movement suggested he’d had less sleep than I had. “It’s strictly a bottom-line issue, nothing to do with the service, Ulrich insists.”

  “Ulrich is an idiot,” I said. “It has to do with loyalty and people’s lives. Why be incorporated as a city, if not to provide police and fire protection?”