The new patient continued to scream in the cubicle at the end of the room.
“I gambled to escape,” Tillett said. “How do you block out the sights and sounds of so much misery?”
Stephanie Tillett’s arrival spared me from answering. I left the Tilletts and averted my eyes from the battered body surrounded by a trauma team at the other end of the room.
I drove straight to the parking lot of Sophia’s, where Adler was tailing Morelli and Dorman, apprised Adler of Tillett’s accident, and told him to take the rest of the day off. That day and evening I watched for Dorman and entertained myself trying to distinguish tourists from residents among the crowds that strolled the marina docks and frequented the restaurants.
A little after midnight, Dorman exited the restaurant, supporting Morelli, who staggered from drink. Dorman helped the big man into the front seat of Dorman’s ancient Buick and drove away.
I followed them to the entrance to Pelican Point and waited while Dorman drove his boss to his house and helped him inside. Dorman then drove to his garage apartment and didn’t leave until early the next morning when he went straight to the Body Shop on U.S. 19.
Lucky for me, a Dunkin’ Donuts shared the gym’s parking lot. I was refueling on leaded coffee and a cruller when my beeper squawked. At a pay phone in the parking lot, I called Bill and watched for Dorman to leave the gym.
“Someone drained the brake fluid from Tillett’s car, all right,” Bill said. “There’s a puddle of it in his driveway. You can have a tech check the car for prints, but anyone who’d go to this kind of trouble probably used gloves.”
“Nothing to indicate whether Tillett might have done it himself?”
“Sorry, a dead end there. What’s next?”
“Nothing until tonight. I’ll need you to keep an eye on Dorman while I have dinner with the Queen Mother at the yacht club.”
Dorman came out of the gym and hopped into his car. I put on my sunglasses and strolled toward my Volvo. He didn’t glance my way as he pulled onto the highway.
When I trailed him into town past City Hall, a crowd of senior citizens thronged the sidewalks, carrying posters and chanting, “Keep our police department.” I didn’t see any proponents for the other side. Councilman Ulrich had stirred up a hornet’s nest with his cost-cutting proposal.
Dorman reported for work at the restaurant, and I settled in for a long wait, thankful it was October and not July. With the windows down and a sea breeze blowing through, the interior of the Volvo was tolerable in the unshaded lot. I took out my grid of suspects and searched for a missing link, something to make sense of all the disjointed and seemingly purposeless events. Nothing clicked.
Twice during the day, I walked across to use the park restroom and the pay phone at the marina. I talked with Marilee Ginsberg, Rosco Fields and Charlene Jamison, the remaining patients in Karen’s group at the clinic, but none had noted anything suspicious in the last few days. I warned them to be cautious and wished I had the manpower to offer some protection. The only real safeguard I could give them would be catching the killer before he could strike again.
At six o’clock, Bill moved his car from his reserved space by the docks and pulled up beside me. I waved and mouthed thanks and hurried home to shower and dress for dinner.
I abandoned the calamine and Benadryl creams, took extra care with my makeup and put on a new pair of black slacks with a burgundy blouse, slate-gray blazer and low-heeled pumps. I appraised myself in the mirror. For an aging old broad, I cleaned up pretty good.
Mother almost gushed when I met her and Cedric Langford in the club lobby. “Margaret, I’d almost forgotten what a beautiful woman you can be.”
As she inclined her cheek for a kiss, she whispered in my ear, “Cedric will be impressed.”
I doubted Cedric would notice. He was too busy eyeing the buns of steel of a young waiter carrying a tray of drinks from the adjoining bar to the dining room.
When Caroline and Hunt joined us, we moved to our table in the dining room. I’d learned my lesson from the week before and had given up Benadryl capsules for the day. To keep a clear head, I ordered a club soda with a twist of lime. As sleep-deprived as I was, even a whiff of alcohol would have sent me into a deep coma.
My brother-in-law almost managed what I’d attempted to avoid. His long, droning account of his latest group-policy sale to a large software company in Pinellas Park had all of us drowsing, until Cedric picked up the pace during the main course with a lively account of Prince Charles’s recent visit with the polo set in Fort Lauderdale.
After Mother’s initial effusiveness, she lapsed into silence. I grew concerned when she declined dessert. “Are you all right, Mother?”
She smiled weakly. “Just a little tired. I’m not as young as I used to be. Perhaps, Caroline, you and Hunt could drive me home now.”
Caroline sprang to her feet and Hunt hovered over Mother, supporting her on a beefy arm when she rose from her chair.
My initial alarm dissipated with the conspiratorial smile Mother threw me as they left me alone with Cedric. Her health and her matchmaking were in tiptop shape.
I waited until she’d left the room before I turned to Cedric. “Sorry to back out on you, but I’m in the middle of a murder investigation.”
He stood, pulled out my chair and offered his hand. “Good luck, Detective.” His attention drifted to the waiter at the next table.
I followed his glance. “Happy hunting to you, too.”
His gray eyes glittered with amusement as he realized he hadn’t fooled me. He was a nice guy, but definitely not what Mother had in mind for a son-in-law.
I strode through the lobby, out the double front doors, and straight into a robbery in progress. Hunt’s Lincoln Town Car stood beneath the portico with the driver’s door wide open. A young black male had backed the teenage valet against the hood with a gun at his back. Another teenager had his arm around Mother’s throat in a chokehold and a small pistol rammed against her temple. Hunt and Caroline stood frozen beside her.
I drew my weapon and yelled, “Police! Drop your guns!”
The youth holding the valet wavered. He looked about thirteen and as scared as his captive was. But the kid clutching Mother was older, maybe fifteen, with a dead, blank expression that frightened me. He had the cold look of a killer, one who would steal what he wanted, then shoot for the fun of it.
“Back off, bitch,” the older boy yelled at me, “or the old lady’s history.”
“That old lady is my mother, you rotten little bastard, and if you touch that trigger, I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”
His grip tightened on Mother’s throat. “You can’t get us both. You shoot me and my man over there will nail you.”
The kid he called his man looked ready to wet his pants.
“Don’t count on it,” I said. “I’m fast and I’m accurate. And the Black Talons in this gun will rip you apart. With those peashooters you’re carrying, you’d barely scratch me, even if you could fire off a round before I kill you.”
The younger boy backed away from the valet, set his gun down and put his hands in the air. “I just wanted the money. Don’t hurt me, lady.”
The valet scooped up the gun, brought it to me, and I tucked it in the waistband of my slacks.
“Call 911,” I told him.
My adrenaline was spiking. Mother no longer appeared imperious or overbearing, but a pitiful old woman at the mercy of a street punk. I’d have pulled the trigger gladly just to make him pay for the terror he was inflicting on her.
I watched his eyes as I inched forward and caught a flicker of hesitation. “Put the gun down now, before you find yourself in worse trouble.”
While the yacht club yielded rich pickings for thieves, its location on the end of Pelican Beach, an island with only one causeway to the mainland, made getaways difficult. The sirens in the distance distracted him. With the patrol cars approaching, his only way out was to swim, and I’d bet my
pay that this punk couldn’t even dog-paddle.
He tossed his gun aside and released Mother. Hunt caught her as she almost fell.
“Down on your faces, both of you,” I screamed at the youths. “Spread your arms and legs and keep your noses to the pavement.”
I retrieved the other gun and stood guard over the skinny young bodies until the patrol cars arrived. Steve Johnson and Rudy Beaton cuffed the perps. While Steve took witness statements, Rudy corralled the hoodlums into the back of his cruiser. The youngest one was crying with deep, choking sobs, but the older boy scowled at me with a withering look.
Mother, pale and trembling, sat hunched on the back seat of the Town Car. Caroline sat beside her, holding her hand. Hunt looked green around the gills.
“Maybe you should have a doctor check you out, Mother,” I said.
She straightened her back and a bit of her old starch returned. “I’m perfectly well. It will take more than a street urchin to finish me off. And Margaret—”
I waited, anticipating for once in my life a crumb of praise, so long in coming. “Yes, Mother?”
“Where did you learn such deplorable language?” she said with a disapproving shake of her head, then closed the door.
I longed for sleep as I stumbled toward the door of my condo, but the adrenaline still coursing through my body would keep me awake for a long time. I’d slipped my key into the lock, when a figure detached itself from the shadow of the golden rain tree by the entrance.
“Detective Skerritt?”
As hyper as I was, I had to exert all my control to keep from drawing my gun and drilling the person who’d scared the crap out of me.
A young woman stepped into the circle of illumination from the porch light, and I recognized Gale Whatley, Dr. Tillett’s office manager.
“I have to talk with you,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for hours.”
It was late, but in the shape I was in, I wouldn’t fall asleep anytime soon. “Come on in.”
She hesitated. “It’s about the murders. I’m here to make a confession.”
CHAPTER 19
I switched on the lights and motioned Gale in ahead of me. With the collar of her coat turned up and her hands thrust deep in her pockets, she halted in the middle of the living room. Her eyes appeared out of focus, and when she removed her coat, her hands shook.
“Sit down.” I took her coat and pointed to a deep rattan chair.
She perched on the edge of the seat, gripping the front of the cushion with her lacquered nails, like a wild animal ready to bolt at the first noise. When I’d first interviewed her, her looks and composure had reminded me of a fashion model on the runway. Tonight, in scruffy jeans and faded T-shirt with slipshod makeup and flyaway hair, she could have worked undercover vice with Lenny Jacobs, except that the nervous tremors racking her body would have given her away.
“I should have told you before.” She kept her voice low and studied the carpet in front of her toes.
I eased my bone-weary body into a chair across from her and hoped my adrenaline high would keep me awake long enough to hear what she had to say.
She raised her hands, and her long fingers splayed across her throat, as if protecting it. “I wouldn’t have come at all, except I visited Rich in—”
“Rich?”
“Dr. Tillett. I went to see him in the hospital. I told him you had to know.”
I curbed my inclination to prod her. In the strained silence, the grandfather clock ticked loudly, and in the kitchen, the refrigerator motor kicked on with a whir.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she blurted. “I didn’t think it would harm anyone, but now…”
Tears glistened in her eyes, rolled across her high cheekbones and smeared her botched makeup. For all her veneer of sophistication, she was just a scared kid.
I reached across the pass-through counter into the kitchen for a box of tissues and handed it to her. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
She plucked a tissue and wiped her eyes. “Rich didn’t kill his patients. You have to believe that.”
“He had a reason, a million-dollar reason. And he has no alibis. That puts him right up at the top of my list of suspects.”
She shook her head with such force, her dark hair fell forward, covering one eye. She pushed it back and glared at me. “But he does have an alibi. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“For the night Peter Castleberry was murdered?”
“For all of them. He was with me.” A flush darkened her fair complexion.
“How do I know you’re not making this up to protect him?”
“I have the hotel receipt from the weekend in Boca Raton.” She fumbled in her purse, withdrew a crumpled paper and handed me a credit card slip from the Marriott in Boca. “Rich came straight to my room after he checked in at the resort and stayed until the time for his meeting the next morning. And the night Peter died, Rich was at my house.”
She seemed too embarrassed by her admissions to be lying. “You’d have made my job a lot easier if you’d told me this in the first place.”
Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “I couldn’t. We were afraid Stephanie would find out.”
I nodded with fake sympathy. “A wife can be such an inconvenience at times like these.”
“That’s not the way it was.” She raised her chin in defiance. “Rich loves her. His family means more to him than anything.”
This was definitely a different twist from the old my-wife-doesn’t-understand-me excuse. “Pardon my silly question, but if he’s so crazy about his wife, why is he having an affair with you? And vice versa.”
“It all started with the gambling. When Stephanie learned how much money Rich had lost and the size of the debt he’d accumulated, she was furious. If it hadn’t been for the children, she’d have walked out. The threat of losing her brought him to his senses. That’s when he joined Gamblers Anonymous, but breaking his addiction was tough, and Stephanie wouldn’t speak to him, much less help him.”
“And you decided to play Florence Nightingale?”
“I do the bookkeeping, so I knew about the debt. Rich needed emotional support, someone to cheer him on in his struggle to regain control of his life, and he wasn’t getting it from Stephanie.”
I refrained from commenting that support probably wasn’t all he wasn’t getting from Stephanie. “So your adultery is just a higher form of altruism?”
Sarcasm laced my voice, and she winced at its bite.
“I know it looks bad, but I wasn’t trying to be a home wrecker. I’ve known all along, when this is all over, Rich will go back to Stephanie. That’s why I couldn’t tell you. If she found out about me, she might never love him again.”
I studied the tearstained face, wondering if masochism was gender-specific. I’d met too many women who’d ruined their lives loving the wrong man. “Why tell me all this now?”
“Because Rich’s life is in danger. Whoever killed his patients is trying to kill him. You have to believe me. You have to protect him.”
I believed her. Such a pathetic story would be hard to make up. She wanted me to save him to live happily ever after with his wife and children. I couldn’t decide whether the woman was an idiot or a saint.
After Gale left, I slept for a few hours before reporting for work, but stakeout is not the most stimulating activity. I’d almost dozed off midmorning when Adler tapped on my car window. He slid onto the front seat of my Volvo, parked at the rear of the lot at Sophia’s, where I had a clear view of all entrances and exits.
“I checked the serial number on the .22 you found at Englewood’s,” he said. “It’s the same gun stolen from that old couple the night Edith Wainwright was killed.”
“Ballistics report back yet?”
“Nope, but the lab matched the tear on the duct tape on its barrel with the duct tape on the plastic bottle Castleberry’s shooter used as a silencer. Guess that confirms our killer is a man.”
&nb
sp; “How do you figure?”
“The couple whose house was robbed the night Wainwright died, the thief was a man.”
“Maybe the thief fenced the gun or sold it on the street. There’s big money in stolen weapons.”
“Before I forget—” he dug into the pocket of his leather jacket and handed me a letter “—this came for you at the station.”
I slit open the pale blue envelope to find a typed letter from Anastasia Gianakis that read, “I’m sorry to have missed you on Saturday. Please call me at your EARLIEST convenience. I must talk with you about the circumstances of my niece’s death.”
Something bothered me about the letter, and I stared at it for a moment before the detail registered.
I shoved the paper into Adler’s hand. “Take this back to the station. Look in the evidence room for a white card with Karen Englewood’s name typed on it and send them both to the lab.”
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Check out the word earliest, typed in capitals. There’s a broken serif on the E, just like on the card I found at Edith’s house. If the typewriters are a match, it puts Anastasia at the scene of the crime.” I opened my door and climbed out of the car. “I’ll ask Bill to take over here, then I’m going to pay our typist a visit.”
I negotiated a gauntlet of cats, sleeping in the morning sun on Anastasia’s front porch, and rang the bell. Like the other houses on the narrow, winding street, Anastasia’s looked like something from the Greek islands with its glistening white paint, Mediterranean-blue trim and bright fall flowers that bordered her front walk.
When she opened her door, the pungent smell of garlic and cinnamon escaped. She wiped her hands on a white apron and smoothed the severe lines of her black dress over her plump curves. Eyes like chunks of obsidian squinted at me in the bright sunlight.
I displayed my badge and introduced myself. “I’m here in response to your letter.”
Her squint dissolved into a warm smile that revealed traces of the beauty the Gianakis brothers had fallen in love with. She swung open the screen door and led me into a front room cluttered with overstuffed furniture. “Sit down. I’ll fix some coffee.”
Pelican Bay Page 17
