Secret Justice

by Diane Capri

  George would be working until well into the night. I was beginning to feel like a prisoner in my own home and I couldn’t wait for Gasparilla month to be over so that I could get some of my life back.

  I decided to eat scrambled eggs in the kitchen rather than face the crowd downstairs again. George wouldn’t even notice I was missing. Tomorrow night would be another long one as we kept the restaurant open until the wee hours of the morning for folks going to the Knight Parade. I felt entitled to a quiet dinner before the onslaught.

  Dressed in yellow pull-on knit slacks and a matching sweatshirt with brightly colored fish on the front, I sat at the dining room table and ate my infamous “Eggs a la Willa.” I’m not sure exactly what I put in the eggs. It’s never the same thing, but just whatever we happen to have that isn’t growing mold.

  This time, the final result was heavenly, and I don’t even like eggs. Pumpernickel toast and hot tea completed the meal, which was fine enough to support a great French chardonnay. Not that it matters what I eat with a great French chardonnay.

  I intended to think about Margaret, Otter, the CJ and Ron Wheaton. I meant to figure out what the connection was between them and why I felt so uneasy about it all. But by the time I had finished my eggs and wine, I could hardly keep my eyes open and called it a night.

  I slept fitfully, and my dreams that night were vivid snapshots of one disjointed scene after another. Ron Wheaton was walking around Minaret, kicking up his heels every now and then, square dancing at the Minaret Krewe Gasparilla Ball with Sandra Kelley as the Queen, wearing a sparkling tiara, diamonds dripping around her neck.

  Gil Kelley with his King’s crown, leering after my stepmother, who sported the swollen belly of her near-term pregnancy, giving her lanky frame the look of a pencil carrying a basketball.

  Dr. Marilee Aymes in my courtroom arguing that Sandra Kelley should be executed for embezzling from her husband’s bank.

  And, just to be sure I recognized these as nightmares, the CJ in a cartoon version of prison garb, peering at me from behind the bars of our holding cell in the old federal courthouse.

  When I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding wildly, I was grateful for whatever had awakened me, although it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was.

  I thought I heard the cannons on the José Gasparilla firing off just as they had on the day of the Pirate Parade, when Ron Wheaton had died and Chief Hathaway suggested that Margaret could have been a mercy killer.

  Once I came fully awake, I realized it was still dark out and the cannons wouldn’t sound again until next year’s parade.

  So what woke me up? George was snoring gently in the bed beside me, exhausted from the party tonight, for which I had never made it downstairs. Both dogs were sleeping peacefully, too. Why did I wake up?

  And then I remembered the final snapshot in my dream. Margaret Wheaton gleefully injecting her wheelchair-bound husband with a lethal dose of morphine.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 4:00 a.m.

  February 17, 2001

  SATURDAY BEGAN EARLY. I couldn’t get back to sleep after that last nightmare. If a real noise had awakened me, I never learned what it was. Otherwise, it must have been an over-active imagination, or messages from my subconscious. Or something.

  In any event, when I woke up at four o’clock, it was pitch black out and colder than a frozen daiquiri in our flat.

  I wrapped myself in the warm terrycloth bathrobe that George had bought me for Christmas from the Don CeSar hotel. The robe was pink, like everything else associated with the hotel, and had an emerald green crest on the pocket. I snuggled my feet into the matching lamb’s-wool lined slippers and headed to the kitchen.

  Temperatures were well below normal for February. Our nineteenth-century home was long on charm, but drafty and short on heat. When we renovated the house, we did the best we could with insulation. But the old clapboard siding had cracks in some places that gave Old Man Winter free passage.

  Both dogs and George were sleeping soundly and the rest of the flat was quiet. I went into the kitchen and started my tea ritual, the one I use when I want to calm my nerves. I’d picked up my journal on the way through the den, too.

  I’d started journaling recently at Kate’s suggestion. She had given me a black spiral-bound journal with Andy Melon’s words on the front, “When your heart speaks, take good notes.”

  I was resistant to it at first, but now I found writing in the journal to be a comfort. Kate, who is more than a little metaphysical, feels strongly that keeping a journal is a way to reach your inner guidance, whatever that is. I just feel it helps me to organize my chaotic thoughts.

  I still didn’t believe Ron Wheaton had been murdered, Chief Hathaway’s suspicions, Dr. Aymes’ suggestions, and my over-active dreams notwithstanding. But I’d found during a spot of trouble George had been in recently that it helped me to figure things out if I wrote them down.

  After the kettle heated, I poured the hot water over chamomile tea in my mother’s Royal Albert tea pot and covered it with the rose tea cozy she’d loved. This ritual with Mom’s tea things comforts me somehow.

  While waiting for the tea to steep, I carried everything in on a tray to my favorite chair and ottoman in the den, where I lit a small fire in the fireplace. The last piece of the ritual is to select one of the animals from my Herend zoo to share my contemplation.

  I studied the animals inside the curio on the wall in the living room. The zoo had been Aunt Minnie’s. I think she had a Hungarian admirer at one time. He gave her a beautiful set of Queen Victoria china and the whimsical porcelain figurines painted in the technically difficult fishnet pattern.

  Judging from the many animals in her zoo, the relationship must have lasted for a while. Aunt Minnie had given all the animals Hungarian names that she left in the inventory we received when George inherited the house.

  To the extent Aunt Minnie’s ghost or spirit still lives with us, she must be pleased that I admire her zoo and George is adding to her collection. Whenever a particularly special opportunity arises, George orders an unusual piece from Hungary to give me.

  The animals are now available here in the States, but all of Aunt Minnie’s pieces, and mine, were specially made for us.

  Tonight, I chose Szabo, Aunt Minnie’s blue cat, stretched out and lying down, looking as if she was as content with life as a cat could possibly be. Seeking some tranquility myself, I settled in with her, picked up my journal and began to write down everything I knew about Ron and Margaret Wheaton.

  I found I needed to shorten my musings because in the past ten years, I’d learned a lot about Margaret.

  For instance, I knew she was an only child, like me. That made us feel closer to one another.

  I’m technically an orphan, I guess, since both my natural parents are dead. But I don’t feel like an orphan. James Harper adopted me when he married my mother. I was five years old and he is the only father I’ve ever known.

  Kate Austin was my mother’s best friend and has been my soul mother since I was sixteen, the year Mom was diagnosed with the breast cancer that eventually killed her.

  But Margaret felt like the orphan she was.

  Both of her parents had died when she was young. She didn’t marry Ron Wheaton until she was twenty-five. Ron had adored Margaret. That much was obvious to anyone who ever saw them together.

  Although she was grateful for Ron and felt affection for him, when she married, Margaret’s heart had belonged to another. She’d never told me much about him but, once, when another friend had been having marital problems, Margaret said, “Not everyone has the storybook marriage you have, Willa. Some of us can’t have our one true love. We’ve had to make the best of what we’ve been offered.”

  It’s one of life’s ironies that everyone always assumes my life is so perfect. People feel free to accuse me of being beautiful, rich and, most dismissively, lucky, as if such luck was a pe
rsonal affront to the speaker.

  Margaret had done so that day, telling me that my life was blessed in a way few lives are, that I should be grateful. What she didn’t say, but I heard, was “more humble.”

  The truth is that I feel attractive enough, most days, although I’m far from beautiful. We live comfortably, but George and I both have full-time jobs, and not just because we want to contribute to the world, except in the sense that we have to pay cash for groceries, like everyone else.

  I am lucky, though not in the way people accuse me of.

  The most significant thing that’s ever happened to me was that my mother died of cancer. While she was ill, we spent as much time together as we could: I wanted to savor every moment of the life she had left. Mom wanted me to go to school and the truant officers insisted that I go at least half a day. But the last few months of her life, they let me stay home.

  That was such a glorious time. She taught me how to make bread, arrange flowers, put on a dinner party. She told me all of the secrets a mother imparts to a daughter about dating and dealing with men.

  Mom and I had our own little world then. Dad was traveling, as he always had, even at what was clearly the end of his wife’s life. On some level, I never forgave him for that.

  But on another level I was glad for the time it gave my mother and me to be together. Maybe that was his present to both of us.

  It was while Mom was sick that she told me she’d wanted to be a lawyer instead of a nurse. And I promised her that I would do what she had not done.

  Eventually, Mom died and her husband never came home. I was sent to live with Kate, graduated from high school, and then went directly to the University of Michigan.

  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I know now that I was lucky to have loved my mother for sixteen years, and to have had her unconditional love while she lived.

  She sent me into the world with that—the love, desire and support necessary to make something of my life. Every time I think of her, I think, “I could be better,” not just as a lawyer, or a woman, but as a person.

  She believed that what’s important is how you live your life, how you treat others. She taught me always to do my best and to help those who need it. It was a hard lesson to learn at sixteen, but I learned it, and it sustains me. It also gets me into trouble. Mighty Mouse does save the day, but it’s not easy.

  Of course, I am grateful for my life. But anyone who really knows me understands that things are not always what they seem.

  And that was the remark I’d snapped at Margaret at the time, causing her to stop talking.

  I cursed my impatience now, because I missed the opportunity to learn more about Margaret Wheaton’s relationship with her husband, why she married him and what had happened to the love of Margaret’s life.

  Ron Wheaton was a janitor and later, maintenance supervisor, for Hillsborough County Schools. He was a big man, capable and well liked, from all accounts.

  He and Margaret didn’t travel in our social circles for the most part, but when we did see them at events or around town, Ron was always pleasant to me.

  We invited Ron and Margaret to Minaret on the day of the Parade of Pirates, just as we had invited almost everyone we knew. Before Ron was diagnosed with ALS, both were active members of Minaret Krewe. They would come to the parties every year and celebrate until the wee hours. Ron was a party person, even then, and so was Margaret.

  After his diagnosis, Ron deteriorated fairly slowly for an ALS patient, but it was just too much of a struggle for them to socialize as they once had done. Indeed, I was surprised when they showed up for the Minaret Krewe party last week.

  Ron’s condition had gotten much worse than Margaret had led me to believe. He was mostly confined to his motorized wheelchair, which he could still maneuver himself but couldn’t get out of without help. They had twenty-four hour care at home, where Ron slept in the guest room in a hospital bed most days.

  I’d been pleased they had come because Ron wouldn’t allow visitors to the house. He hated people to see him so debilitated, unable to care for himself and dependent on Margaret.

  I refilled my teacup, poked the fire and gazed at Szabo’s peaceful countenance, imagining I could hear the ceramic cat purr.

  Returning to my journal, I recorded all the curious behavior I’d witnessed this week, from Margaret, the CJ, Gil and Sandra Kelley, Marilee Aymes, and Armstrong Otter.

  Was there a connection between them all? And, if so, what was it? Did it have anything to do with Ron Wheaton’s death? Or to Otter’s legal problems? As I wrote these questions down in my journal, I felt better.

  Asking better questions is the first step to solving problems of all kinds. I knew the answers would be revealed to me in due time. Thinking about everyone else left me free to ignore the issues I was facing with Dad and Suzanne, too, although I knew I’d have to do something about that soon.

  The chamomile tea wasn’t making me sleepy, and I’d written about all I knew of Ron and Margaret Wheaton. The sky was slowly beginning to lighten in the east. I made a list of all I had to do today. Yet another celebration this evening was scheduled here before and after the Knights of Sant’ Yago Illuminated Knight Parade in Ybor City.

  Whatever it was that caused George to think having a Krewe named after Minaret and sponsoring them every year would be a good idea, I can’t imagine.

  Yes, the Krewe did a lot of good works for the community and George was always wanting to “give something back,” but really—we just could have written a check or something.

  Which made me smile. After all, I was the one training for the 15K Gasparilla Distance Classic next weekend just to raise money for Young Mothers’ Second Chance.

  A small light dawned in my head—that was another thing I knew about Margaret Wheaton. She sits on the board at Young Mothers’ Second Chance. She told me once that these women and their babies were her own children and grandchildren, since she and Ron had never been blessed with a child themselves.

  I reopened my journal and wrote that down, too, where I’d previously written in “Children—none.”

  I closed my journal, and as I set it aside it fell to the floor. When I bent down to pick it up, I found the article from the Tribune George had brought to my attention last Saturday. I picked it up and returned it to my journal, promising myself I’d read it after my run. I replaced Szabo the cat, the tea things and my journal to the kitchen table, and began the day.

  Dressed in a long-sleeved tee-shirt and long cotton pants, I pulled out my light-weight gloves and a headband to cover my ears, and left George snoring while the dogs and I crept down the back stairs.

  It was too cold to throw sticks into the water for them today, so we started to run. Within seconds they were so far ahead of me that I could barely see them in the gloaming. They wouldn’t leave the island, though, so I wasn’t worried. It was peaceful to run in the pre-dawn without the dogs trying to lope around me every step of the way.

  After two laps around Plant Key, all three of us returned upstairs. I headed directly for the shower while Harry and Bess had their breakfast. I could hear voices in the kitchen and noticed that George was out of bed as I walked through the bedroom and our dressing room to the shower.

  I missed my weekly golf game during Gasparilla month. Usually, I spend every Saturday morning at Great Oaks Country Club, playing golf with my former law partner and whomever else we could get to make up a foursome.

  With every Saturday taken by one festivity or another, golf was impossible. Yet another reason to look forward to March, I thought, smelling the ginseng shower gel that promised to deliver energy today.

  When I toweled off and dressed in black jeans, Topsiders, lime green socks and a matching lime green sweatshirt, I spent about two minutes with the blow dryer, which is all it takes to dry my short auburn hair. I applied light makeup and quite a bit of concealer over the dark circles under my eyes.

  Thinking I was prepared, I shrugged
and faced the day.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 8:30 a.m.

  February 17, 2001

  BY THE TIME I made it to the kitchen, George was alone, reading the paper and drinking coffee in his white pajamas and the royal blue silk robe he favors. I smiled as I noticed the blue silk scuffs on his feet, too. How many men dress like that these days? Damn few, I figured, given the casual look that has become so popular with the Generation Xers.

  I’m an old-fashioned girl. Give me Cary Grant in his silks anytime over those rugged Xers with their hip-hugging pants, tight shirts and scratchy, unshaven faces.

  “Morning, darling,” he said, eyeing my journal on the corner of the kitchen table and the leftover tea things. “Manage to run your cares away?” George knows me too well.

  “Not all of them,” I told him as I made my café con leche and Cuban toast. Usually I don’t eat breakfast, but I’d been up so long this was practically lunch time. “Where is everyone?”

  “We should talk about Jim and Suzanne, you know. It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to go away by itself. In fact, I’d say we’re soon going to have even more to think about,” George told me gently.

  “Like what?” I was still fooling around with the toast. It takes longer to toast half a loaf of Cuban bread than you might think, even if you don’t put the cheese on it, which is the way I eat it.

  “Jim told me they want to have several children. This isn’t going to be the only one. You’ll have a much bigger family than you expected. It’s something you’re going to have to deal with.”

  This wasn’t altogether surprising, really. Suzanne is young and she told me she loves children. I expected her to want more of them, at least in the abstract. These things have a way of working themselves out once the reality of 3:00 a.m. feedings sinks in.