Clearwater Journals

by Al Rennie

My arrangement with the Donner Fishing Charter was pretty loose. Frankie Jr. could call me if he needed an extra body to keep the charter guys in beer, chips and bait. As well, I was expected to fill dead air with friendly chatter about the trivia of Clearwater and Gulf of Mexico. I knew where Hulk Hogan lived and where John Travolta had built his mansion. I could talk about the value of local real estate but not Scientology—or Tom Cruise. Stuff like that. I was free to accept or reject the offer of the day’s work without any hard feelings. Frank had the same arrangement with five or six other retired guys who would go along on the excursion for bare minimum wage. When I entered my room after watching Mia drive away, I checked my answering machine. Although I could have used the money, there were no requests for my services. I could go to the library the next morning and do what I had promised Mia.

  The next morning was classic Clearwater Beach for me. The sun was bright and hot. The sky was incredible - iridescent shades of blue with not a cloud in sight. There was only a puff of wind, and the fresh morning air around my head was a fine, salty blend of gulf water, tropical vegetation and my coconut butter tanning oil. Six or seven screeching wild parakeets were squabbling over the nesting rights in the Foxtail Palm behind the garage. That palm, that anchors Mrs. Reilly’s little backyard garden, and her garage are right across from my bedroom window. Damn, I love Clearwater Beach. Every morning, I wake up glad to be alive. Most mornings like this, I’d grab a book and my breakfast and sit in one of the two blue and white striped lawn chairs in the small yard doing little more than working on my tan. Not this morning though. Today, I had to start my investigation for Mia.

  The Clearwater Beach library is on Mandalay Avenue just up the street and across the road from the Hilton Hotel. It shares a small, pink strip mall with an ice cream joint, a souvenir shop, a gym and the headquarters for the Jolly Trolley. For a buck twenty five you can ride the entire beach from north to south as well as the Island Estates, Clearwater and Sand Key. You want to ride all day on the trolley? It’s the same price—a buck twenty five. One of the drivers, a young guy on a disability pension from the army named Sam Langford, told me about a woman on her honeymoon. She had a fight with her new husband at the Hilton Hotel. The angry young lady got on the trolley with a picnic hamper and two library books and rode the open bus all day. Her husband had thought that she had been mugged and called the cops.

  Because there are not a large number of actual permanent residents on the beach, the library is minor league by any standard. It is a satellite of the new main, very large and very expensive, City of Clearwater Public Library. Most of its lending business is done in the prime season—February to May. As it is has only limited shelf space, it is minimally staffed and supplied. The available space is divided into a small office for the librarian on duty, tiny—his and her—washrooms, and the main floor where the books are shelved. There is a bank of four older computers with Internet connection. As well, there is a smaller bank of in house computers used to maintain the accounts of its borrowers. On these computers, you can check the availability of the various titles stocked on the shelves and reserve new books just out. There are two substantial worktables with four chairs at each table. Near the washrooms along the back wall, there is a single row of four study carrels each with its own hard wood armchair. The operation was a pretty standard and simple and almost never busy.

  One of the two things that made this library distinctive from others I have visited was the display of “on sale” art painted by local artists. Almost all of the framed pieces were done in the airy pastel shades popular with the west coast Florida painters. One of the best artists is a very talented woman named Helen West. She and her husband can be found, on almost any evening, selling copies of her work on Pier 60. I have one of her prints hanging over the headboard of my bed. Almost all of the canvases on the library walls were for sale at reasonable prices.

  The other distinctive feature was the prevalent aroma of incense. When I visited the library the first time to take out a membership, I had asked about the pungent scent. The librarian smiled at me and admitted with a soft chuckle that she regularly listened to the Beatles and burned sandalwood incense in her office. She claimed it helped her to concentrate. I wondered if she sometimes she used it to disguise the odor of marijuana. It’s the way a cop is taught to think.

  During my most recent visit, I had been looking for more blonde jokes. The on-duty librarian, on that occasion, had been an older, gray haired lady who was tanned to the shade of an over ripe banana. My impression of her then had been that she regarded all libraries as sacred places where only incredibly reputable and scholarly people toiled in total silence. She, in turn, took her few responsibilities in the small library seriously.

  This time when I entered, the same gray haired lady did a quick take on me and bit her upper lip. Maybe she remembered that I was the guy who had been looking for all the blonde jokes that he could find. I realized immediately that she did not like what she saw. Maybe my appearance led her to believe that I was there to be a pain in the ass again. I had the feeling that rubber flip flops, ragged blue jeans, and a decaled rust coloured T-shirt declaring my love for Clearwater Beach were not, in her opinion, the attire suitable for serious scholarly work.

  When she had been on duty that cool rainy afternoon that I had spent looking up blonde jokes, she had had to remind me four times that laughing was not permitted in the library. She had forcefully asked me to leave on that occasion. Now I was back.

  This time out, I figured it might be a good idea to have her on my side. I quietly claimed a place at a vacant worktable. I pulled out one of the hard wooden chairs neatly spaced around it and placed my worn backpack on another. I slowly approached the elder lady with feigned trepidation. I tried to imagine how a slightly retarded grade ten high school student might ask his brilliant mathematics teacher for help doing quadratic equations. It didn’t matter; the old doll was reserved in her response.

  “Can I help you sir?” she asked professionally.

  I explained what I was looking for. She gradually became interested and then warmed to my genuine request for her assistance.

  Maybe she was bored or maybe she believed that she could get me out of there faster if she helped me. Whatever her motive was, after I explained to her what I needed, we were soon talking like old friends.

  The librarian’s name was Ida May Thornberry. She was from a small town in upstate New York where she had been the local public school librarian. Her husband, a former fireman named Eugene, “his friends called him Guy”, had gone to fight his big fire in the sky—cancer. But, during the course of his life, he and Ida May had put aside enough money for the two of them to fulfill their adult dream of living in Florida. Her two daughters now visited her with their families once every winter. She lived in a small apartment building in the City of Clearwater—“not the beach, far too expensive”. She rode the local bus to her job every day that she had library duty. I guess she was lonely. I got all that information without even asking.

  As soon as I told her that I was looking for anything and everything that I could find on the murder of a teenage girl in Pinellas County three years ago, Ida May hit the computer like Sherlock Holmes on “crank”. If she had believed that I was demented from our first meeting, her assessment of me was probably confirmed when I could not even tell her the last name of Mia’s sister. I had forgotten to ask. So much for all those finely honed police skills flooding back. I’d not even managed to get the dead girl’s full name.

  Mrs. Thornberry was not in the least deterred by my lack of information. She started with obituaries in the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune. She then hit the smaller weekly papers like the Belleair Blabber. In a very short time, we were building a fairly comprehensive file on the murder of Mia’s sister—Victoria Anne Doulton.

  From the obituaries, Ida May and I tracked back through the newspaper reports. We generated a time line from the moment Vickie was reported as an unidentifie
d body found partially clad in a small field, to a final statement offered by one of the investigating officers. One of the more dedicated reporters had come up with a standard yearbook thumbprint photo of Victoria Doulton. The grainy picture was of a thin blonde youngster with vacant eyes and a weak smile. Ida May enlarged the photograph on her computer’s Canon three in one printer, scanner and copier. I studied it carefully and then added it to my growing file. The final article that we found was dated just over three weeks later when Sergeant Stuart Langdon, the detective in charge of the case, announced that while the investigation would remain open, there were no new leads to pursue. He assured the reporter that it would be only a matter of time before the guilty party or parties were brought to justice. Translation—the investigation was at a dead end. Nothing else could be done until the killer hit again—if he killed again.

  The date on the final newspaper report was three years earlier. There was nothing further. We had the when, what, where and the first part of the—who—the victim. We were missing the—who’s—second part—the killer—and also the why. I thought that if we were able to figure out why Vickie Doulton was murdered, we might be able to determine who the killer was. Of course, the assumption I was making was that the victim knew her killer. A random killer with no real motive but his own self-serving agenda would be impossible to apprehend now. I wondered if Sergeant Langdon had finally concluded that Vickie Doulton had met up with a modern day Jack the Ripper whose method of killing was strangulation. If this was a wrong place—wrong time murder, our chances of finding the killer were non-existent.

  I recalled the good advice given to me years ago in the thick Scottish brogue of my training officer, Detective Sergeant Ian McGregor, “Aye, watch where the pennies go and answer your five w’s laddie, and you’ll solve yer crime every time.” I was teamed with McGregor during the last two months of his career on the force. I had just made detective and been transferred to major crimes. I learned more about police work in those two months with that old curmudgeon, McGregor, than I did in all of the police courses I ever took. Given the lack of scientific and technological resources available to him that exist today, the guy’s solve rate was incredible. Ian McGregor “ate his gun” three months after he was compelled to take mandatory retirement.

  Okay, I had some of the w’s, so I knew where to start. I thanked Mrs. Ida May Thornberry for her help and gathered up the copies of the news articles she had printed for me. I placed the news items, arranged chronologically, in a manila folder. I then stuffed everything into my backpack. The kindly librarian almost seemed disappointed that our search had ended.

  “Probably just enjoys doing research and talking with people,” I thought as I securely fastened the zipper and straps of the pack.

  Just as I was about to leave, I remembered to ask her to say nothing to anyone about the research we had done. I tried to make it seem like it was pretty mysterious stuff a la James Bond or Jason Bourne. Let her feel that she was part of a big mystery.

  “Mrs. Thornberry, if anyone should ask you about the murder of Vickie Doulton or even about me,” I said to her in hushed tones, which was kind of silly as there was no one else within twenty feet of us, “see if you can find out who they are and let me know. I’d really appreciate it. And thank you again for all the help you have been to me. I’ll be back here soon enough—but no more blonde jokes—I promise.”

  “I’ll do that Joe,” she said with a friendly smile. She was taking her own quick survey of the library—checking to see if the enemy was close at hand. “Mum is the word—you try to look after yourself Joseph Holiday.”

  Killing Time