On a whim, she typed in Calvin Hagen. Third down was a link to a biography website. She skimmed the article. Calvin Hagen, originally from New York, had moved to Florida when his sister, Hedda Collingsworth Hagen, married John Ringling in 1930. Billing himself as an entrepreneur, he struck several real estate deals with companies interested in relocating to the Sarasota area. Rumors of questionable transactions dogged him, however, finally culminating in his being declared a person of interest in the case of the missing Biddlesworth. When the police dropped the case for lack of evidence, he left town. He was last heard from in California. A footnote linked to an article on Hedda Hagen Ringling. Out of curiosity, Charity clicked on it.
Mable Ringling, first wife of John Ringling, died in 1929. John Ringling met Hedda Hagen, a wealthy socialite, in New York and married her the following year. By all accounts, the marriage was a rocky one, and Ringling served her with divorce papers in 1933 and again in 1934. They were divorced in 1936.
The article did not mention Hedda’s brother. Poor lady, to have a brother under suspicion of murder probably didn’t enhance her relations with her husband. Hagen. Hmm. Could he have murdered Biddlesworth and dumped him in the pit?
The office manager tapped her on the shoulder. “It’s six o’clock, Charity. Aren’t you going home?”
“Oh my, I didn’t notice the time. Thanks, Violet.” Charity turned off the computer and gathered her things. Waving at her boss, she ran down the stairs to her car.
Her cell phone went off as she unlocked the door to her apartment. She clicked it on. “Hello?”
“Hello. Charity? Can you hear me? I’m on one of those pre-paid phones.”
“You’re floating in and out. Let me go out on the balcony. The reception’s usually better there.” She stepped outside. A gull landed on the railing and eyed her suggestively. She shooed it away. “Can you hear me better now?”
“Yes…Um, I just wanted to let you know I arrived safely.”
“In Paris?”
“Yes—I told you I was coming here.”
“Well, I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”
“A bit testy this evening, aren’t we?”
She could hardly tell him she was jealous, so she settled for, “Sorry, I’m tired. What do you want?”
“Besides you?”
“Ha ha.”
“That’s all—just checking in. I meet with the local polizei tomorrow. I have located Isabella.”
“Isabella?”
“Isabella Voleuse—my editor.”
“Ah yes. I suppose that’s her stage name.”
“As a matter of fact, she did do a stint on Broadway as an understudy.”
“Tell me it was for Ethel Merman.”
“No, actually, it was for Daryl Hannah.”
“So…she’s beautiful?” Remember Mother’s dictum—don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.
“I can’t help it, Charity. She is in fact quite good-looking. It’s what misled me in the first place. She’s also exceedingly intelligent and a very smooth talker.”
It popped out of Charity’s mouth before she could stop it. “And good in bed.”
Rancor paused. “Yes.”
“Oh. Well, I have to go. It’s—”
“Charity. It’s no use pretending you’re not jealous. I can hear it in your voice. There’s no need to be. Remember, Isabella is a crook. I’m here to stop her from publishing my book. I’ll be back as soon as I get my hands on her…I mean, it.”
“O…kay.” She breathed deeply, willing herself to let the hurt feelings go. When she felt calm enough, she went on. “I have a bit of news. I did some more research on the graduates.”
“And?”
“I think we may be zeroing in on the identity of the body.” She told him about Bartlesby, as well as Biddlesworth and Hagen.
“I’d pursue Bartlesby first. Did you try Costa Rica’s mortuary records?”
“Excuse me?”
“Didn’t you say his wife claimed he had decamped to that delightful country to avoid his financial obligations?” He paused. “Spent a month there once…ah, the cloud forest, the beaches, the girls…”
“You might be better…equipped…to deal with the Costa Rican authorities. Why don’t I leave that one for you?”
He responded in what could have been—under less remote circumstances—a fatally enthusiastic tone. “Sure!”
To head off further salivation, Charity decided to share her discovery. “Noteworthy fact—Hagen was Hedda Ringling’s brother.”
“Hedda Ringling?”
“John Ringling’s second wife. He married her after Mable died, but divorced her six years later.”
“Hmm. I wonder if there’s a connection to Ringling in all this? Wouldn’t that be something?”
“I don’t see how. Calvin Hagen strikes me as the typical bad boy brother who gets in constant trouble and is a trial to his relatives.”
“You said Ringling divorced Hedda—could it have been because he’d had it with her sibling?”
“What would that have to do with Biddlesworth’s murder? No, the way I see it, Hagen’s deal with Biddlesworth went south, so he killed Biddlesworth and chucked his body in the shaft. That’s why he was never found. Case closed.”
“Why didn’t he just roll him overboard?”
“Because, silly, he was never on the boat. Hagen arranged for the sail, and he went on it claiming to be Biddlesworth. He’d already killed the real Biddlesworth.”
“You have this all figured out, don’t you?”
She couldn’t help but preen. “I do. Biddlesworth graduated from University of Maryland in 1931. He married Edna Gwendolyn—there’s your G. He went to Florida after college and disappeared in 1933. Ta da.”
“What kind of deal were Biddlesworth and Hagen working on?”
“Some kind of real estate thing.”
“Find out more about it. And check into the nature of Hedda’s relationship with her brother. After all, Ringling was heavily into real estate at the time. You know he built St. Armands Circle and the Gulf of Mexico Drive?”
“No. Really?” She hoped the sarcasm would ooze through cyberspace and flick his ear lobe.
“Yup. You should know this stuff, Charity. He started buying up land and promoting the area in 1911, including parts of all the keys. If your grandparents had played their cards right, they could have purchased a bungalow in the Ringling Isles Estates.”
“If they’d been built. They suffered the same fate as the Ghost Hotel.”
“Well, there is that.” Rancor was quiet for a minute. “I read somewhere that he used his circus elephants to build the causeway.”
“Wow—where was PETA when we needed them?”
“Hey—it was good work for good pay. A bushel of carrots every morning, plus a shower massage administered by your own personal mahout, and all the peanuts you can eat. By the way, did you check 1932 University of Maine graduates?”
“Yes. Roger P. Brewster disappeared into the wilds of Alaska, and your grandfather apparently did nothing significant whatsoever.”
“Really? That would be a first for our family. “
“Every family has a bit of dead wood. In the case of the Basses…”
“You were going to say?”
“It goes without saying.”
“Well, after that remark I won’t tell you how much I adore you. In fact, I’m rethinking this whole marriage thing.”
“What marriage thing?”
“My God, woman, don’t you ever listen?”
Charity gulped. “Tell me again.”
“I can’t. I’m out of francs—or is it euros? Anyway, call you tomorrow.” She heard a click, and the line went dead.
Chapter Seven
The Jailbird
The next day being Saturday, Charity slept in. Once a week, she would indulge herself by doing nothing—not walking, not writing, not mooning. Over the years, she’d spent a lot of time moo
ning. There was Kip, her first boyfriend. They went steady in sixth grade, and he taught her sign language. That, and the time her mother caught her with her hair down while he ran his fingers through it, was the sum total of Kip’s legacy. Then came Axel, the high school football star. As a total geek, Charity couldn’t believe her luck. A tight end! She could still feel the scar in her heart when he sat her down and earnestly explained that she was too smart for him and they had to break up. She had never been sure if he meant it as an insult or a compliment. After that, she gave up on finding a man who didn’t think she was either too intelligent or too weird.
Then came George. He scooped her up after her parents died and put her to work at his paper. He recognized the talent in her—and more importantly, her insatiable curiosity. “That’s what I need in a reporter, Charity. I want a terrier, a bloodhound, a nose-to-the-ground badger.”
“So…you want a vicious, bloodthirsty animal?”
“Not bloodthirsty—news-thirsty. You’re a natural, Charity. You won’t let a story go. And you don’t care where it leads.”
That had been five years ago. She’d had several offers since then—from the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald, among others. She’d kept the email from the Chicago Tribune asking for her resume and reread it now and then when she needed encouragement, but something kept her here on Longboat Key. Not my parents, surely. If pressed, however, she had to admit that whenever some big-city paper made noises about luring her away, she’d find herself on the path to Quick Point Preserve, staring into the water at New Pass, reliving the nightmare dawn when the police called her with the news.
They’re still here, I know it. Watching over me. Missing me. Her lips turned up. Maybe they could watch over little Tommy T too, poor kid.
Charity rose from the bed and padded toward the shower. Out the window, black billowy clouds raced across the sky. West to east. They’ll pass over. She knew the sky well—a useful skill, since Longboat Key experienced weather significantly different from the mainland, or even Tampa Bay. The meteorologist would predict heavy downpours and residents would scramble indoors, only to have the storms skip over the island entirely.
As she was toweling off, the phone rang.
“Charity? It’s George. Are you up?”
“Yes.”
“Kelly let Standish have the skeletons, and the great man has deigned to send a final report, which I hold in my formerly ink-stained hands. He may be a jackass, Charity, but he’s very thorough. We know quite a bit about the adult skeleton—even without his teeth. Can you come in?”
“It’s Saturday!”
“And your point?”
Sigh. “I’ll be there in twenty.”
After dressing and stopping at Olaf’s for a sandwich and a bottle of seltzer, she trudged up the stairs to the Planet office.
George was poring over a file. “You certainly took your time. Never mind, I’ve got all day.” When she spun around and headed out the door he yelled, “Wait! Come have a look.”
Charity set down her seltzer and took a big bite out of the sandwich. Egg salad dribbling from the corner of her mouth, she said, “Just tell me.”
“Okay. The subject was indeed an adult male in his twenties, Caucasian, probably highly active sexually.”
“How on earth do they know that?”
“The pubic bones are super thick, indicating an unusually large penis, and there’s some wear on them, indicating heavy use.” He grinned wickedly. “Who said forensics couldn’t be titillating?”
Charity thought of her well-endowed lover. Maybe we should take another look at Robert Bass…”That’s not really going to help in identification, is it? I mean, we’ll hardly find corroboration of his…measurements in any news source.”
George seemed disappointed. “I guess not.”
“What else?”
“There’s no sign of disease, but discoloration on the inside of the ribs may mean he had a lot of fluid in his lungs when he died. And he stayed wet for a long time. Standish says if he were immersed in water, it likely took longer than usual for him to decompose.”
Biddlesworth and the boat ride.
“According to him, it could have been weeks. The stench must have been awful.”
Charity put down her sandwich. “Urk.”
George didn’t seem to notice her reaction. “But if he were interred in the thirties, it wouldn’t have mattered, since the hotel was abandoned at that point—and stayed that way until 1963. Let’s see…what else?” He flipped some pages. “Over six feet tall, he’d had a couple of concussions at some point and was probably married.”
“Married! How did Standish figure that out?”
“Indentation on the third finger of the left hand. The doctor says it indicates pressure had been applied over a fairly significant period, causing a stress fracture at the joint. Ring was probably too tight.” He looked up. “He asked if one had been found at the site.”
Charity took a large swallow of seltzer. “Um…was there?”
“Not that I’m aware of. It’s something to ask Kelly.” He closed the file. “How’s your column coming?”
She hadn’t had time to recover from her anxiety attack, which included a vision of herself in a prison jumpsuit and leg chains, so she barely mouthed, “I’ll do it today. Later.” She skipped to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Oh, by the way, where’s Bass? Haven’t seen him for days. Not that I miss him—he ain’t an easy person to work with. Plus, with this skeleton story to wrap up we don’t need him underfoot making demands, now, do we?”
Charity reflected that she would most definitely like to have him under her but refrained from saying it out loud. “He’s out of town for a few days.” The words depressed her even more.
“Oh? I thought he was a little short in the funds department.”
The old reporter still has a nose. For a minute, Charity toyed with the idea of not telling George, but it seemed pointless to keep the information from him. At least some of it. “You were right. He’s writing this ghost book to make a quick buck.” While waiting for Sugar Mama to cough up?
“What, running out of Dom Pérignon?”
“Something like that.” She left quickly before he could inquire further.
She spent the rest of the day at the beach. Sunday dawned cloudy and chilly, so she did all the errands she’d been putting off. When she got home, she found Jane sitting on the umbrella stand by her door. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“Forgot?”
“Our lunch date. We were going to St. Armands today. I’ve been dying to try that new Greek place, Samos Nights. Don’t tell me you can’t make it?”
Lunch. Chat. Confession. “Of course I didn’t forget. By the way, George called me down to read Standish’s report.”
“Report?”
“Ah, I can see you need updating. Let me change, and we’ll head down.”
“Hup to, I didn’t get any breakfast.”
They settled into a booth in the empty restaurant and ordered retsina—“You’ll like it, miss. Is Greek wine.”
“Thank you, Costas.” Jane unfolded her napkin. “So, the collaboration with the hunk is on hold?”
“For now. But he’s…helping me with the skeleton story.”
“He is? You two an item? Wow.”
“No, no! He’s not even in town now.”
Her distress must have clanged through her words, for Jane gave her a sudden pat. “You like him, don’t you?”
Charity took the glass from the waiter and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled—probably not charmingly. “What is this stuff?”
“Retsina. It’s wine flavored with resin. It grows on you.”
“Yes, like fungus…or mold. It smells like something left out in the hot sun too long.” She put the glass down. “Could I have a glass of”—she ran her eye quickly over the list—“Roditis please?”
The young man shot her a lo
ok of mingled disappointment and admiration. “Right away, miss. Are you ready to order?”
Charity looked over the menu. “You know what you want, Jane?”
“I’ve memorized the online menu. I’m having the mezze plate and then shish kebab. How about you?”
“Oh look, they have saganaki. Isn’t that the cheese flamed with brandy? That’s yummy. I’ll have that and…a Greek salad.” Costas took their menus and trotted off to the kitchen.
Jane winked. “So where is lover boy?”
“Paris.” Charity’s shoulders sagged.
“Paris! Hmm. I suppose he’s one of those F. Scott Fitzgerald types—very sophisticated, with a delicate palate and his own gondola.”
“Actually, he’s flat broke.” I think.
“Surely you jest. I assumed he was raking in the royalties. He should’ve made enough off me alone to buy a private island.”
“That would be true, except that his editor has absconded with the office petty cash. He’s in France looking for her.”
“Her?” Jane’s eyes brightened.
Charity answered wearily. “Yes, her. Apparently, she’s beautiful, articulate, and brilliant.”
“And good in bed.”
Sigh. “According to Rancor, yes.”
“Oh dear. Well, not to worry—whoever she is, she can’t hold a candle to you, my dear.”
Basking in the glow of friendship, Charity didn’t hear the waiter come up behind her, douse a plate with brandy, and light it. All she heard was a whoosh, followed by the aroma of singed hair. Costas gasped and dropped the plate on the tile floor, smashing it to bits. As he tried to smother the sparks still scintillating in her braid, he gabbled, “Oh, miss, I’m so sorry. Here—” He stuck a napkin in her water glass and dabbed at her head.
“Stop that!”
In response, his eyes filled with tears. He stepped back, whirled, and ran to the kitchen. In the sudden silence, Jane hiccupped. “Too funny.”
Charity glared at her. “I begin to see why we’re the only patrons.”
Jane looked embarrassed. “It has gotten a few reviews—mostly devastating—but I love Greek food, and it’s the only one around. I’m sure they’re just working out the kinks.”
The Pit and the Passion Page 10
