Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  Blood had settled in Andrews’s feet and buttocks, the report said, which was consistent with his sitting position. Again, the livor mortis pointed to the time of death as being at least two hours earlier.

  Andrews’s body temperature, measured at the scene, was low enough that the medical examiner felt confident he’d been dead at least six hours when they found him.

  All of which is a convoluted way of saying that Andrews died well before time for the Blue Coat Golf Tournament. Knew that, too.

  Reading through to the bottom of the first page, I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t known before. I became impatient with Olivia’s drama. She probably sensed my feelings, but said nothing.

  I flipped to the second page. Much of this I’d already learned from the police file, except the notation in the third paragraph where it said that the bullet, once they removed it from Andrews’s head, had tiny strands of gray wool fabric embedded in the tip, possibly from a jacket or heavy sweater.

  The conclusion was that the bullet had passed though a wool jacket or sweater on its way to Andrews’s head. Find the fabric and whoever was wearing it was the killer.

  There were probably only about twenty or thirty million people in America who owned at least one grey wool jacket or sweater. This was progress?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 5:05 p.m.

  January 29, 2000

  BUT, THE GREY FIBER was something we hadn’t had before.

  I grudgingly gave her the praise she was due. “Well, Olivia, I guess you do have a right to be pleased with yourself. You’ve gotten some real evidence for us to work with.”

  “There’s a problem with it, though. The fiber itself is not that helpful, but it does tell us that we should be looking for a gray wool jacket or sweater. Like most businessmen, I assume George has several gray wool jackets?” She asked me, with a natural arch to both eyebrows that any woman would admire.

  I was preoccupied with the report. “The curious thing is why Ben Hathaway hasn’t asked to see any of them,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. That is the curious thing.” She waited like a comedienne to deliver the punch line. “And why do you think that is?”

  I finally looked up at her, giving her the full attention she craved. “Why?”

  “Because they’re afraid they won’t find it.” She was almost rubbing her hands with glee, like an Oz munchkin after a delicious sparerib dinner. “I asked Ben Hathaway if he planned to request a search warrant for George’s closet. What do you think he said?”

  “I give up.”

  “He said, maybe later. Then I asked him if he wanted me to look first. He said he’d appreciate that.”

  “I don’t get it. Why do you want to do his job for him?”

  “Think about it, Willa. If we look for a grey wool jacket with a hole in it and we find it, I have an ethical obligation to turn it over to the police. So do you. Otherwise, we’d be obstructing justice. Hathaway wins.” She stopped a second or two. “But if we don’t find it, he doesn’t have to report a negative result after obtaining a search warrant, and his prime suspect is still his prime suspect. Hathaway wins.”

  She laid it out for me as if she was explaining the strategy behind a major league playoff.

  “I understand all of that, Olivia. What I don’t understand is why we would want to help Drake keep George under suspicion of murder for a second longer than necessary. You’re supposed to be representing us, remember? If Drake looks like a fool, that’s just fine by me.”

  I could have denied her the permission she needed, but she wasn’t the only good strategist in the room.

  Grabbed up my purse and said to Olivia, “Let’s go search my husband’s closets.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 5:45 p.m.

  January 29, 2000

  WE TOOK SEPARATE CARS back to Plant Key and I was definitely not practicing my mindfulness during the drive. I was trying to decide whether to disclose to Olivia that George had moved out.

  She probably wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at his closets, because he’d only taken a few things with him when he’d moved to the club. But the point of looking at his jackets was not to find an incriminating one. To do that, we’d have to look at them all, and some were at the Club with George.

  For some reason, there were no media vans parked at the entrance to the Plant Key Bridge. Maybe we were catching a break.

  I arrived at Minaret just moments before Olivia and we both parked in valet at the entrance. After I let us into the flat and got Harry and Bess calmed down and out the back door, we approached George’s dressing room.

  When we remodeled Aunt Minnie’s house, we took one of the bedrooms and made it into two dressing rooms with walk-in closets: His and Mine.

  George’s closet was meticulous. His suits hung the same way you’d find suits displayed at a clothing store. Each suit on a wooden hanger and all facing in the same direction, colors grouped together, followed by sports coats.

  Shirts were boxed and neatly stacked in cubby-holes. Ties hung on racks between the suits and shirts.

  Casual clothes were separated by a row of drawers for underwear, hose, and the carefully pressed and stacked monogrammed linen handkerchiefs George carried every day.

  Just standing in his closet, smelling his Old Spice scent on everything, bothered me. The closet was so George. I missed his steady presence.

  “Knock yourself out,” I said. “I’ll make us a cold drink.”

  I left her in George’s closet so I wouldn’t give anything away while watching.

  Olivia believed George didn’t shoot Andrews and there would be no hole in any of his grey jackets to find. But George would never have left such evidence in his closet.

  I assumed Olivia had already thought this through, but I wasn’t going to help her with it. I knew things about George that no other human would know. While I might have to work through my own doubts, I would never disclose anything that would help Drake’s case.

  Olivia came out of the closet empty handed about ten minutes later. Smiling and shaking her head, amused by George’s closet or by what she didn’t find there.

  “George is a real gem, you know,” she said. “That closet is a wonder to behold. Because the curiosity is killing you, I’ll just tell you that I didn’t find any holes in any of his nine grey jackets.”

  I didn’t argue with her, but it felt good to realize she didn’t know everything.

  Olivia followed me out to the veranda, sat in George’s chair, and waited while I lit my Partagas.

  “Now what?” I asked her.

  “Now, I’ll tell Ben Hathaway I’ve looked for a grey wool jacket with a hole in it and found nothing. He won’t get a search warrant. You’ll be spared the inconvenience and insult of a search. Believe me, after the police searched that closet, it wouldn’t look anything like it does now.”

  Olivia reached into her pocket, removed and ate three shortbread wafers shaped like Mickey Mouse. She ate the ears off first, just like the child she resembled in size. She didn’t offer me one. This was the third time I’d seen her do this. A blood sugar thing? She offered no explanation; I refused to ask.

  We talked about the contents of the police file for a while. Both of us had seen it before, except for the autopsy report we’d gotten today. Much of the evidence didn’t really point to any thing, except for the gun.

  I showed her the gun logs and inventory George kept, which provided written documentation that corroborated his story about when he last shot the murder weapon, although not that he had loaned it to Peter, as he’d told Olivia.

  I kept almost nothing from her. It was a relief to let someone else share the load, even though I wasn’t sure her small shoulders could handle the burden. I trusted her. What else could I have done?

  Olivia was right that George would continue to believe his duty was to protect my office and me from scandal. But
judges have been involved in all sorts of behavior that was much worse than being married to a man accused of murder.

  One of my colleagues on the state court bench had defeated an impeachment attempt after being accused of pointing a gun at a law clerk and threatening to blow his head off.

  And while I was practicing law in Detroit, a judge was accused of taking bribes for fixing traffic tickets, an offense clearly depicted on a video tape “sting.” He was tried and acquitted and returned to the bench.

  While we judges aspire to the heights of human potential, the fact is that judges are people, too. Like military generals. We are far from perfect.

  So George was being overly protective. As usual. His desire to take care of me was something I often appreciated, but right now, his self-defined honor code was a block depriving our investigative team of some of its best potential strategic thinking.

  We needed him. It was that simple and I planned to make him see that tonight.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 7:00 p.m.

  January 29, 2000

  GEORGE ARRIVED CARRYING A small box beautifully wrapped with a big pink bow. He was casually dressed in his usual Florida uniform of well-pressed khaki slacks, a teal golf shirt and highly polished, brown woven loafers. No socks.

  When he held and kissed me, he smelled wonderfully like the combination of Irish Spring soap and Old Spice deodorant he uses. I held him a little too close, a little too long. I really missed him and I was very glad he had come home tonight, at least for a while. I couldn’t even think about the possibility that he might go to prison and be gone from me forever. The idea was impossible.

  We both laughed when Harry and Bess jumped up between us, breaking us apart, as if to say, “Hey, what about us?”

  They jumped, wagged their tails, ran in circles, acted like they hadn’t seen him in years. I watched as George rolled around on the floor with them while I mixed drinks and opened my gift.

  The present was a retired Herend wild goose in purple fishnet to add to Aunt Minnie’s zoo. The goose looked angry. He had his head extended and his mouth open, as if he was chasing away a fierce enemy.

  The purple color is only available for special trunk shows and there hadn’t been one in Tampa for a couple of years. When I asked him where he got it, he just winked and said, “I’ve got my sources.”

  Over the years, George has learned that the smaller the box, the more successful the present.

  Remember Pavlov: reward behavior you want repeated.

  I put the goose up on the mantel out of the reach of wagging tails and thanked him properly.

  That took about twenty minutes and really messed up my lipstick.

  We spent the evening the way we would have before all this craziness began. We dined on food from George’s restaurant, consumed a bottle of red wine, and discussed affairs of the day.

  After dinner, over liqueur and coffee in the den, I said, “Olivia has uncovered suspects who had stronger motives to kill Andrews than the one Drake thinks you have. We need to analyze the evidence and figure out what to do.”

  George sat his drink down on Aunt Minnie’s highly polished mahogany table. On a coaster, of course. “Honey, listen to me. I have been talking with Olivia pretty regularly. I know what she’s found.”

  He seemed amused. George simply refused to deal with anything he didn’t want to deal with. His arrest fell into that category.

  He said, “I don’t want to spend the limited time we have together talking about this. I know it will all get resolved and it will be fine. Have a little faith.”

  In a cartoon, steam would have been coming out of my ears.

  I tamped down my annoyance, knowing another argument would get us nowhere.

  “Well at least tell me what Peter did with your gun. Do you know how the gun ended up at the Andrews’s house?”

  Apparently, I’d pushed too hard. His tone was no longer gentle. “Peter didn’t do anything with the gun, Willa. He didn’t give it to anyone and he didn’t kill Andy with it. Let it go.”

  Then, he got up and walked out the door, just that fast.

  “When this is over,” I fumed to the empty room, “I will kill George myself.”

  I jumped up and paced around the flat, waving the glass of liqueur. “What is wrong with him? Doesn’t he understand how serious this is?”

  I wasn’t over-reacting. That had been made only too plain to me today during my conversations with Olivia.

  George was smarter than the average criminal. Whatever he’d done, George was engaged in a battle of wits now with Michael Drake. George thought he was smarter than Drake, and I could only hope he was right.

  I continued ranting in this fashion for quite a while until I ran out of steam.

  After that, I was left alone with another night of furious journaling, unanswered questions and too much room in our bed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Tampa, Florida

  Sunday 7:00 a.m.

  January 30, 2000

  THE MORNING PROMISED TO be another Chamber of Commerce day, the kind that we used on all the promotional videos. High, light clouds decorated a clear blue sky while a gentle breeze rustled the palm trees. The kind of day when the locals wore long pants and long sleeves, and the tourists went to the beach and turned blue from the chill. The forecast called for a high of seventy-six, and a twenty percent chance of rain. In contrast, the high in Detroit was to be twenty-seven degrees.

  Have I mentioned lately how much I love living in Florida?

  Trying to restore some normalcy to my days through sheer routine, while at the same time seeking an epiphany in the case, I ran along the Bayshore today instead of around the island. Perhaps the methodical pounding, in slightly different scenery, would jar my brain and produce some fabulous insight that would end the insanity that had become our lives. I could hope.

  The days of an endorphin-producing run on the Bayshore were limited by threatening progress, the kind that was filling the land with high-rise condominiums and traffic. As I ran, the weather changed. The wind became stronger and managed to whip up a few choppy waves on the shallow water. The water now looked gray and stormy, but there were no raindrops imminent. I saw the Big Bend Power Station in the distance and was reminded of how long it had been since I’d gone to see the manatees that gathered there.

  I wanted a long run to clear my head and the mindless repetition of putting one foot in front of the other soon allowed me to notice my surroundings.

  Two men passed each other, running in different directions. Each raised a high five to the other.

  “What’s up, stud?” The westbound runner shouted.

  “How ya doin’, cool?” The eastbound one cried back.

  Neither looked stud-like nor cool to me.

  Bodies of every shape, size, and description populated the sidewalk, clothed in outfits similarly interesting. Handkerchiefs around shaved heads, striped shirts with plaid shorts on males; females in full war paint, dressed as if they were making a glamorous workout video. The number of infants sleeping in jogging strollers being pushed by adults on roller blades was surpassed only by middle-aged men jogging with headphones.

  In short, I saw a typical day on the Bayshore, and felt a little better knowing that the world was still operating normally, at least in some spheres.

  By the time I completed my morning routine, my plan was formed and I got to work.

  Jason was staying with his mother, Kate, while he was in town. I called Kate’s house and he answered the phone. Luck was on my side.

  “Hello, Jason. How are you today?”

  Almost as if the feeling traveled through the phone line, I could sense his wariness. After the recent revelations he’d made concerning his work for Senator Warwick on Andrews’s confirmation hearings, I’d wondered more than once how well we understood each other anymore.

  When I was growing up in his household, Jason was already off to colle
ge. He came home on weekends, but he had little time for a younger sister.

  Still, the bond had always been there, and I thought I still felt it; did he?

  “I’m fine, Willa,” He said, impatience evident in his tone. Maybe busy with something he considered essential; resented my interruption. “Kate’s not here right now. Can I tell her you called?”

  So I skipped the pleasantries. “I need about thirty minutes of your time.”

  Confirming my hunch, he said, “Can’t do it today, unfortunately. How about tomorrow?”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I told him, and hung up the phone.

  He might not stick around to talk to me, but I’d cross that bridge when and if we came to it.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Tampa, Florida

  Sunday 10:30 a.m.

  January 30, 2000

  IN LESS THAN TEN minutes, I pulled around the corner of Kate’s house on Oregon Avenue. The driveway faces Watrous Avenue and provides a straight shot into the double garage. As I had at Robbie Andrews’s house, I blocked both exits.

  I hurried up, opened the unlocked screen door, and walked in. Unlike Kate, Jason the city boy, would have locked the door if he’d ducked out.

  I walked through the small house and found him sitting at the desk in the television room that Kate uses to do her household bookkeeping. He looked a little foolish sitting there, I thought, among Kate’s New Age paraphernalia. Surrounded by the moon and stars mobile and the Tarot chart, he held the telephone receiver up to his ear, listening. I could hear Sheldon Warwick’s voice through the receiver from where I was standing across the room.

  Jason gestured me to sit down and turned back to his call. “I know, Sheldon. There isn’t much I can do about it right now. The local police are investigating, they’ve made an arrest, the ball’s in their court.”