Licensed to Thrill: Volume 3

by Diane Capri

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know that I knew exactly what I would do, even then. But I didn’t expect to wind up a sixty-five-year-old adulteress. I suppose, if I had grandchildren, they’d be appalled,” she smiled, with a little wickedness and no regret.

  “So you were having an affair with Armstrong Otter?”

  “I wasn’t having an affair with Armstrong Otter. At least, I didn’t know that I was. I’d never met Armstrong Otter in my life before that day in the courtroom.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “No, I don’t suppose you do. Your life has been so different from mine, Willa. You’ve never been on your own. You’ve never been completely free, with no one to answer to and only your whims to guide you. You wouldn’t know what it’s like to fall madly in love with a dashing young man who loved you back, and have no chaperone to tell you ‘No.’ You have no idea how quickly and completely a young girl with a little spirit can lose her heart. And her head.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, Margaret was right.

  I had never been so footloose, so free with myself.

  I’ve always felt a keen sense of responsibility, a need to work hard, to keep my nose to the grindstone.

  I didn’t know what a carefree life would be like, but I was more than a little envious of those who had lived one.

  “So you were in love with Otter?”

  “Not exactly. I fell in love with David Martin in Nassau. He was friends with Gil Kelley, a boy from home. Although Gil and I certainly were never social equals. David was handsome, kind, fun. I ran into the two of them one day in the straw market and we started doing things together. Exciting things. Like drinking and gambling and riding in fast cars. Things I’d never done before. I loved it. And pretty soon, I loved David, too. It was a short step from there to an affair and a secret marriage a few months later.” She shook her head at her own folly.

  “You must have been thrilled, then?” I imagined a younger, carefree Margaret, in love and happy with the man of her dreams.

  “For a short while, I was. Exceedingly happy. Happier than I’d ever been before or have ever been since. But then David died and I was devastated. We’d kept our marriage a secret, so I couldn’t tell anyone I was a widow,” she said.

  Margaret went to the funeral, where they had a closed casket. No one came except Martin’s co-workers from the bank. She never saw his body or knew who identified it.

  “For a long time, I thought David really hadn’t died,” she told me. “The kind of wishful thinking young girls engage in when they want to avoid the truth.”

  “But you were right. He hadn’t died,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know it for forty years,” she sighed.

  A moment later, she explained, “Right after David died, I found out I was pregnant. There was no way I could have raised a child alone in those days. So I gave the baby up for adoption, came back to Tampa. Eventually, I met and married Ron Wheaton and started a new life. I thought Ron would be my life forever. Until I saw David Martin again, quite by accident. I was over at St. Pete Beach, just thinking, one day. I went into the Hurricane restaurant for lunch. Ron was dying, my life was changing before my eyes. The man I had always loved more than any other was truly alive. I had no choice but to keep loving him. I counted on Ron to understand that.” She blinked back tears at the memory.

  Another piece of the puzzle fit into place. Margaret’s reaction to Otter when she saw him in the courtroom had bothered me. What had caused her to faint? There was nothing particularly shocking about his appearance as far as I could tell. Otter was dressed a little better for court, but otherwise, looked much the same as I had seen him the day Ron Wheaton died.

  But Margaret hadn’t known “David Martin” was “Armstrong Otter.”

  It was hearing her lover called by the name of a man she knew to be accused of countless crimes in U.S. v. Otter, the case on my docket that she was familiar with, that crushed her.

  Margaret’s dreams of a return to an idyllic life were extinguished by that chance encounter; Otter could have continued to lie to her for a long time if she hadn’t seen him in the courtroom.

  “How did you know Otter had killed Ron?” My gut had been right on this one. Chief Hathaway had confirmed the syringe I’d found in Minaret’s azalea bushes was Ron Wheaton’s murder weapon. And he’d confirmed Otter’s fingerprints on it.

  Otter had easily overpowered Ron and injected him in the stomach. The medical examiner found the puncture.

  Margaret shrugged. “Just a feeling. Ron and I had been arguing about Otter, whom I still thought was David Martin at the time. Ron knew all about my marriage to Martin and our daughter, of course. But he also knew about Otter living in Pass-a-Grille. Ron wanted Otter to stop seeing me. They quarreled the day of the Parade of Pirates at Minaret. At first, I really thought Ron had had a heart attack. But when the suggestion was made that he’d been murdered, I just felt Otter had killed him. It made sense. No one else would want to hurt Ron.”

  “Now, let me ask you something,” she said to me. I nodded. “How did you know it was Sandra who had killed Otter?”

  Margaret managed to say the name clearly, without choking up, which I saw as another sign she was healing.

  What should I tell her, though?

  I didn’t know Sandra had killed Otter. Not for sure.

  But when Hathaway told me he’d found a witness who saw Margaret push Otter to the ground on Eighteenth Street and leave him there, I remembered how much alike Sandra and Margaret had looked that night.

  I suspected Sandra but couldn’t figure her motive.

  Until Dad told me about the offshore bank deals.

  Sandra was an officer of Tampa Bay Bank, too. She easily could have set up the offshore deals and taken the finder’s fee. I figured Gil didn’t know Sandra was taking the finder’s fee. Nor did she know Gil was embezzling funds from the bank after the deposits had been made. Somehow, Otter had found out and was bleeding them both.

  I made the connection when I remembered cutting my hand on the sharp sword point of Sandra’s lapel pin on the day of the Distance Classic. The pin that was a perfect copy of Otter’s Gasparilla Gold.

  As nasty as Sandra had been to me and to Dad, it was no small bet that she was as vicious as a female tiger when protecting her children and her way of life.

  Otter must have threatened to expose her thefts when he tried to squeeze her for more money. Sandra probably hadn’t meant to kill him when she shoved him down. But we’d never know.

  “Just a lucky guess,” I said, in response to Margaret’s question. “Let’s go.”

  I pulled Margaret up off the couch, helped her lock the door, and we fairly sauntered out to Greta, who already had her top down, basking in the Florida sunshine.

  Today, Margaret and Willa would have a carefree, frivolous adventure. And, I vowed, more such days to come.

  It was long past time for me to lighten up.

  EPILOGUE

  USING WHAT WE HAD learned from Margaret’s old boxes and what she told us afterward, Dad filed a federal complaint against Gil and Sandra Kelley. Dad hopes the Kelleys will be convicted and go to prison. The insurance company will pay off some of the money they embezzled. On Dad’s recommendation, the company sued Gil and Sandra for restitution. The legal wrangling will go on for years, but at least Dad stopped the bleeding from Tampa Bay Bank.

  Margaret has retired. She was eligible to retire anyway and she wants to spend time looking for her daughter. Adoption laws in Florida have changed in the last forty years. With the help of a good investigator, Margaret should be able to find her only child.

  Ron Wheaton’s estate went to Margaret. He had no other heirs and since no one objected, the life insurance company paid the death benefits to Margaret. She was lucky, but she also was helped along by a certain United States District Court judge.

  Not me.

&nb
sp; The CJ.

  He had not only employed Margaret at one time, but he thought very highly of her work at the court. CJ made a couple of telephone calls and actually did influence someone to do the right thing.

  Not that he thought of it all on his own.

  The CJ’s investigation was settled quietly when he admitted guilt. He was able to arrange a confidential agreement allowing him to remain on the bench in an administrative capacity until retirement. His opportunities for advancement to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals are ruined now. This is unfortunate for me, since the only hope I had of getting rid of him was the Peter Principle—to have him kicked upstairs to Atlanta. I thought maybe this experience might make him more humble.

  But, of course, it did nothing of the kind.

  Dad and Suzanne returned to New York after the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts. Dad was tempted to buy a few more of Otter’s “Jewels of the World.” Since Otter had died, Dad thought they’d increase in value because of the notoriety of the case. We talked him out of it for the time being. We can only hope that he forgets about the gems until after Otter’s estate is settled.

  Otter left Margaret everything in his will, except that his debts so far exceeded his assets that she’ll be unlikely to inherit anything.

  Margaret did want the Gasparilla Gold pin that Otter had entered in the Festival of the Arts. She had to pay fair value for it, which was considerably higher because it won the Raymond James Financial Best of Show award.

  What she inherited from Ron Wheaton’s estate, after I gave it all over to her, made Margaret a wealthy woman.

  She hopes to spend the money spoiling her grandchildren.

  * * *

  EARLY IN MARCH, AFTER all the Gasparilla hoopla had finally ended and everyone had left, George and I were sitting at our favorite booth in the Sunset Bar, enjoying the quiet. My soul-mother, Kate Austin, walked in unannounced, two days early from her month-long trip to Italy.

  I jumped up from the booth and hugged her like I hadn’t seen her in thirty years, not just thirty days. I was telling her how much I missed her and how happy I was to have her home, when I noticed, finally, that she wasn’t alone.

  A young man stood behind her.

  He looked to be very Italian and about twenty-five years old. He had dark, curly hair and fabulously blue eyes that reminded me of the Aegean. Kate was always bringing someone by the restaurant asking George to give them work.

  Oh, no, I thought. Not another chef. The last one she’d offered us was Japanese.

  I could see George preparing to tell the young fellow that George’s restaurant didn’t need any more chefs at the moment, when Kate pulled back from me a little and gave George a hug, too.

  Then, holding both our hands, she said, “Willa, George, darlings, I’d like you to meet Leonardo Columbo. My husband.”

  THE END

  Dear Friends,

  Welcome to Licensed to Thrill: A Diane Capri Sampler, a bonus book of special extras from me for you. Our team has selected each item with one goal in mind. We want you to enjoy reading Licensed to Thrill as much as we enjoyed creating it for you. But I’m telling you right up front that gifting you this volume is a plot. Not only are we giving you some great stuff here, we’re hoping these samples will entice you to read more of my books in the same way chocolate candy stores ply you with tasty morsels at the mall and wineries waft open glasses under your nose. Fiendishly clever, isn’t it? Exactly.

  You know I’m a recovering lawyer, right? Which means I’m a little skeptical about things and you might be, too. So if you’re new to my books, I thought you might like to discover for yourself why Margaret Maron, the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award-winning Mystery Writers of America Past President, says: “Diane’s expertise shines on every page.” And Library Journal raved “...tense legal drama with courtroom overtones, twisty plots, and loads of atmosphere. Recommended.”

  We start with a gift copy of Fatal Enemy, featuring the new heroine I really love—Jess Kimball. She’s a fiery woman, driven by her own past to fight for crime victims the justice system failed. Jess reminds me of Jack Reacher, only female, smaller, and nicer. Like Reacher, Jess is alone in the world wherever she goes. But unlike Reacher, Jess is on a mission only she believes in, only she can complete. You’ll find out what happened to Jess in Fatal Enemy and you’ll see exactly what I mean. In Jess’s shoes, could I do what she’s done? Could you?

  I hope you’ll love Jess Kimball as much as I do because her story continues in my bestseller, Fatal Distraction. We’ve included the opening chapters here for you to sample. When Fatal Distraction opened on Amazon as the #3 Bestselling Legal Thriller, only behind John Grisham, you can’t imagine how thrilled I was! (Why? Hang on a moment—I’m getting to that.)

  But first, speaking of Jack Reacher, Licensed to Thrill also includes opening chapters from my runaway bestseller, Don’t Know Jack. The success of Don’t Know Jack has been especially exciting for us because publishing Don’t Know Jack was a big risk. We had no idea whether readers would love the concept and the stories or not. Jack Reacher is a beloved man in many reading circles, as you may know. His fans are exceptionally protective. No one loves Jack Reacher more than I do. So when we published Don’t Know Jack, I knew I was sticking my head in the mouth of the lion, to be sure. I had my passport ready in case I needed to flee the country ahead of the lynch mob! (Sure, I’m joking—but not a lot!)

  But we knew we had a good concept, a good story, characters I loved (and some I loved to hate!). I hope you’ll see right away why #1 worldwide publishing phenomenon Lee Child calls my work, “Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.” And why Lee gave the series an enthusiastic two thumbs up when he said, “Kim Otto is a great, great character. I love her!”

  Don’t Know Jack kicked off the Hunt for Reacher series and garnered #1 Bestseller spots on the Mystery, Hard-boiled Mystery, Police Procedural, Women Sleuths, and Legal Thriller lists both in the U.S. and U.K. I stopped holding my breath and put my passport back in the drawer. Whew! Close call.

  We hope you’ll be a Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar enthusiastic reader, too. We hope you’ll want to finish Don’t Know Jack as well as the two bestselling short stories in the series, Jack in a Box and Jack and Kill. As long as readers enjoy the books, I’ll be licensed to keep ‘em coming!

  We’ve included even more bonus material for you, too. My Justice Series of suspense mysteries were praised by reviewers and readers as well, but I was especially pleased when the mystery reviewers at Romantic Times awarded Wasted Justice their coveted “Top Pick.” Who knew? What a rush!

  Here in Licensed to Thrill, you’ll find samples from all five of my Justice Series novels, including Due Justice, Twisted Justice, Secret Justice, Wasted Justice, and Raw Justice. Of course, we’re offering you these samples because we hope you’ll be just as hooked on the Justice Series as on the rest of my work.

  Licensed to Thrill includes the Behind the Book dialogue between me and Lee Child at a Manhattan cocktail party that instigated Don’t Know Jack; an excerpt from Lee’s Reacher Report sharing his views on the book; a fun blog post entitled “Diane Capri Reveals Lee Child (not Jack Reacher?)”; and finally—remember what I said about John Grisham? Well, I’ve never met the man, but he started me down the path to actually writing fiction instead of legal briefs. It seemed fitting to include my tribute article originally published in the prestigious masterwork Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, edited by my friends Hank Wagner and David Morrell. You know David, right? The creator of Rambo?

  If you enjoy what we’ve included here, you can find more articles, interesting stuff, and the lowdown on my website any time. I hope you’ll stop by. It would be great fun for me to talk to you and learn a bit more about you. Speaking of that, I’d be thrilled if you’d consider joining our Capri Club. Chat with us and other readers. Let me know what you like to read—and what you don’t. We’ll see what we can do. Visit us at DianeCapri.com or join us on Fa
cebook at: DianeCapriBooks. Find additional contact links below in the Author’s Note section.

  If you would like to be kept up to date with infrequent emails including release dates for Diane Capri Books, free offers, gifts, and general information, please sign up for our mailing list. We don’t want to leave you out! Sign up here: http://dianecapri.com/contact/

  So there you have it. Lawyers don’t lie, you know. Hand-to-heart, I’ve shared the whole truth and nothing but the truth on this very special volume we’re calling Diane Capri: Licensed to Thrill. I really hope you’ll love it (and I told you why). Thank you for reading and see you next time between the covers!

  Enjoy!

  When Life Hands You Lemons,

  Make Martinis—With a Twist!

  The Diane Capri Story

  LIFE WAS HUMMING ALONG on all cylinders for a while. Born in Alabama, I grew up in a small German-American farming town north of Detroit, where I lived a book-filled childhood and followed most of the rules. Graduated from Wayne Law School cum laude and served as an editor of the Wayne Law Review. Ranked in the top 1% of lawyers nationwide, and practiced law throughout the U.S., representing clients from around the world. While I published millions of words during my legal career, most of them were nonfiction. Never drank gin martinis, shaken or stirred.

  Always an insatiable reader with a keen interest in crime fiction, particularly mystery and suspense, I spent the travel years on airplanes and in hotel rooms. I put the time to good use by learning fiction craft when not practicing law, but friends pointed out that my fiction files contained only desire and incomplete projects. Too true. Grisham and Turow and many other lawyers hit the fiction world long before me.

  But in 1995, one shocking phone call destroyed my thriving law practice. My largest client was overwhelmed by product liability lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy protection, blasting a gaping hole in my by-the-book life and leaving me with an uncollectable debt besides.