Death by Marriage

by Blair Bancroft

  I make good money designing nightwear for my Randi and Semi-Randi lines, but for myself, I tend to grab my nightgowns off the rack at Target. It was Florida in January, however, and I was sleeping alone. Again. I slipped a full-length, long-sleeved cotton nightgown over my head. Embroidered with pink flowers, it came straight out of the Smithsonian catalog’s elegant imitation nineteenth century nightwear. So I’m a wuss. After all, there was no one to see my Mother Hubbard but me.

  I pulled up the covers and sank into sleep like a rock plunging into the depths of a pond.

  At some point my dreams got a bit scary—Martin Kellerman dripping blood instead of water as his remains were hoisted onto the diving platform. And there was a noise that wouldn’t go away. The dream faded and I surfaced to my cellphone ringing so insistently I swear I could hearing it flopping across my bedtable. The glowing numbers on my digital alarm read 2:45.

  Phone. 2:45. Oh, God!

  “Hallo,” I mumbled, still not quite awake.

  “Laura Wallace?”

  “Yes.” I hadn’t been Laura Wallace for a very long time. Even my mother had adjusted, but . . .

  “This is Deputy Morrison of the Sheriff’s Department. “We picked up your brother Scott for DUI.” Thank you, Lord! Yes, it was awful, but I’d been afraid of so much worse. I heard noise in the background. “He wants to talk to you,” the deputy said.

  “Laurie, you can’t tell mom. Promise me you won’t tell mom!” Drunk enough to call me Laurie for the first time in more than a decade, but not too drunk to be beg me to keep his latest transgression to myself.

  “Of course I won’t tell mom.”

  “I’m so sorry, really sorry,”Scott babbled, sounding as if he were about to cry. “Just don’t tell mom.”

  “That’s enough.” The deputy retrieved his phone. “His car’s in the bank parking lot on the corner of Alligator Drive and the Trail. You can pick him up in the morning at eight at the country jail.” He gave me the address.

  “Sarasota?” I inquired weakly.

  “Right.”

  “Thank you,” I managed, and hung up.

  Chapter 6

  I sat for a long time on the edge of my bed, not moving a muscle. My baby brother was in the drunk tank at the county jail. Our darling Scott who would have been a star in the age of knighthood.

  My protective instincts kicked in. No wonder he’d drunk himself into a DUI. Finding Martin Kellerman was a ghastly experience by anybody’s standards.

  So what. Lots of people had bad experiences, and they didn’t drink themselves into jail. Well . . . probably some of them did.

  Scott, Scott, Scott, what are we going to do with you?

  I finally reset the alarm, then tossed and turned until it rousted me out at 6:30 a.m.

  Over the years I’d driven the forty-five mile round trip to Sarasota to visit the Ringling Museum, Mote Marine Laboratory, Selby Botanical Gardens, Jungle Gardens, and an occasional ballet, opera, or pre-season major league baseball game. I’d never been to the jail.

  The deserted Tamiami Trail was almost unrecognizable at this hour on a Sunday morning. I reached downtown Sarasota with twenty minutes to spare, so I pulled into the McDonalds at the junction of the Trail and U. S. 301, a few blocks south of the jail, and ordered two black coffees. I hesitated over the bacon, egg, and cheese McMuffin, unsure if Scott’s stomach would be up for it, but decided it was better to have it on hand just in case. I eased out of the Drive-thru and turned my Malibu north on 301. This was it. I was going to jail.

  The Sarasota County jail is new and modern, its narrow slitted windows too small for even Jack Sprat to slip through. I parked in the multi-level garage a block up the street, gloom descending around me with every step I took toward and towering cement structure on my right. As I stood on the sidewalk, studying what I thought was the entrance, a uniformed cop shot past me, pulled open a tilting drawer set into the side of the building and dropped his gun inside, before striding through the door to the lobby.

  Evidently, I was in the right place. One thing I’d picked up during my disaster in New York—no one was allowed to carry a gun into a jail.

  Forget the memories, Gwyn. You can do this, you know you can.

  Ten minutes later, a door opened, and there he was, all six-feet-one of little brother. Tousled sandy blond curls topping a ridiculously handsome face several shades paler than usual, his sky-blue eyes red-rimmed and subdued. A swift hug as he murmured, “Thanks, Gwynie,” and we were out of there.

  Since I had things to say to Scott and I didn’t want to be distracted by the stop-lights on the Trail, I headed east across town to I-75. Scott’s coffee and Egg McMuffin were gone by the time we climbed the ramp to the six-lane interstate and headed south. He was lying back in his seat, eyes closed. It occurred to me that he’d probably had less sleep than I had. The drunk tank isn’t designed to give its inmates a good night’s rest.

  “Uh, Scott, ” I said softly, “the Gazette prints the names of DUIs every week. You’re going to have to talk to mom.”

  “Shit!”

  “Sorry. I remembered while I was driving up to Sarasota this morning.” Brooding silence. “I know you don’t feel like a lively conversation,” I added carefully, “but there are a couple of things I really need to ask you.”

  Scott’s only response was a grunt.

  “There have been some really nasty rumors making the rounds since Friday night, some of them about Jeb Brannigan and Mrs. Kellerman. You know anything about that?”

  Pause. “Jeb’s an s.o.b.,” Scott muttered with feeling, “but even if I was keeping score—which I’m not—I wouldn’t blab about it.”

  I almost swerved into the wrong lane. Fortunately, the south-bound traffic was light, no harm done. “What’s this? Some redneck code of honor?”

  “It’s a guy thing.” Scott at his sulky best.

  Light dawned. “You don’t tell on him so he won’t tell on you.”

  Scott studied the trees and scrubland flashing past as if he’d never seen them before. “Something like that,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, come on, Scott. I need to know.”

  “Hell!” he exploded, jerking upright. “What are you? Sherlock Holmes? Stick to costumes, Gwynie.” His head flopped back against the head rest. “Sorry,” he muttered. “If you want to know about Jeb’s babes, why don’t you ask him?”

  I sighed. “Guess I’ll have to.”

  The remainder of the drive back to Golden Beach passed in silence. I dropped Scott off at his car, which shone like a glowing red ember in the morning sun flooding the deserted bank parking lot. Before I drove off, I reminded him it was Sunday and that Mom would be home when he got there. He gave me a grimace worthy of a gargoyle, and got out. To my surprise, he actually remembered to repeat his thanks.

  I headed north on the Tamiami Trail, taking the left fork onto the old Trail, now called Business 41. The drawbridge near the former Ringling Circus grounds was up, the bridge where Gunther Gebel Williams had smiled at me so many years ago. I turned my engine off and rolled down the windows while I waited in a line-up of about fifteen cars, most of them on their way onto the Island to church. It was still early in the day, and a seabreeze rolled off the Gulf a mile away, unimpeded by our small local airport or the low-lying buildings that used to be the Ringling winter quarters.

  The temperature was closer to seventy than eighty, but too many drivers preferred their air-conditioned interiors, and exhaust fumes soon overwhelmed the seabreeze. Fortunately, the cruiser with flying bridge soon cleared the drawbridge. The claxon sounded, and the center portion of the bridge began its ponderous journey back to flat. I started my engine, rolled up the window. And waited, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. This was why the Bypass was built, right? But my quarry was on the Island, and I was stuck with the mechanics of every boater’s dream and every car driver’s nightmare, the Intracoastal Waterway.

  The bridge finally clunked into place. Evidently the righ
t signals flashed in the bridgekeeper’s little hut, because the red light turned green, and the crossing gates began to rise. The long line-up of cars started across the bridge, setting off the distinctive rumbling of the cross-hatched center section. I sucked in a breath as a small plane skimmed the tops of the cars as it came in for a landing. Ten seconds later it was wheels down on the outer end of the runway. Student pilot?

  We’d had two flight schools in Golden Beach, but there was only one now. Brand new. That’s what happens when, however innocently, you train people like Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly. That’s right. It happened right here in paradise. A stain the town will never live down. Compared to 9/11, the possible murder of Martin Kellerman seemed pretty tame. Yet there was nothing I could do about the attacks on the World Trade Center, but maybe I could help shut down the rumors about Martin’s death.

  That thought had a nice ring to it, like some fairytale I’d spin for Boone Talbot if he asked me why I was sticking my nose in his business. But was scotching rumors what I really wanted?

  Truth was, I had this gut feeling that Martin’s death wasn’t an accident. Maybe I was catching Crystal’s empathic talents by propinquity, because sleuth just wasn’t part of my job description. I’d given up jigsaw puzzles for a sketch pad by the time I was ten. Yet here I was on my way to Jeb Brannigan’s mooring in Golden Beach Inlet when I should be home, ready to pick up the pieces after Scott confessed to Mom.

  I was shirking my family duty. Just plain-old escaping. At this moment, Jeb Brannigan was definitely preferable to 100 Royal Palm Drive.

  When I was growing up in Golden Beach, there was always a long, sleek, white Coast Guard cutter with a mounted 50 millimeter stationed just north of the jetties, the only access between the Intracoastal and the Gulf for twenty miles in either direction. And then one day the Powers That Be, in their infinite wisdom, sold what we considered “our” Coast Guard cutter to Georgia. No, not the state, the country. The one Russia invaded a few years back. Frankly, I don’t think the Golden Beach cutter was much protection against the Russian army.

  Since the local police boat mostly operates on weekends, tagging drunks and speeders, Scott and Jeb had more responsibility than you might imagine for boats in trouble in the Gulf. After the loss of the Coast Guard cutter, Mayor Randy Ellis persuaded the marina nearest the jetties to shoe-horn a space for a rescue boat at the upper end of the line-up of multi-masted sailboats and million-dollar cruisers. Since Joshua Brannigan was still Chief of Police when Jeb decided to muscle his way into the rescue business a few years later, the marina knuckled under a second time without much argument. Scott and Jeb pay peppercorn rents, while the fatcat boaters pay premium prices for berths with instant access to both the Intracoastal and the Gulf of Mexico.

  Scott’s Sea Tow had the end slot, right next to the marine gas pump, while Jeb’s Sea Rescue was wedged between Scott and a double-masted sailboat whose elegant lines, mirror-polished teak deck and gleaming brasswork made the rescue boats look like well-worn children’s toys. Both boats were moored stern in to the parking lot, ready to roll.

  Sea Tow lay quiet and unattended. No surprise there. Jeb was lounging in a fishing chair fixed to the stern well of Sea Rescue, feet up on a bait box, catching some rays. The only thing he was wearing was a pair of khaki shorts, worn street-gang low, plus what was probably a St. Christopher medal on a chain around his neck. Hair that was once a shaggy sun-streaked brown now sported a military cut. Muscles rippled along his body-builder’s arms and broad shoulders as he sensed my presence and sat up, giving me a slow appraisal that was probably meant to be complimentary but made me want to throw something at him.

  I’d dressed conservatively for the jail, navy blue slacks, a light blue cotton shirt with tabbed sleeves. No jewelry except a modest single blue flower hanging from each ear. Yet Jeb made me feel like I was standing on a showroom runway, dressed in a thong bikini. Or maybe wrapped around a pole at a club called Naked & Naughty. My temper flared. The only exercise I get may be climbing the stairs to my third floor workroom or pushing a shopping cart around the grocery store, but I’m still pretty agile. With no more than the aid of a sturdy bollard at the edge of the seawall, I jumped down onto the stern deck and stood, arms akimbo, glaring at Jeb. “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  He removed his feet from the bait box, shoved it in my direction. “Have a seat, Laura darlin’, and tell me what I can do for you.” If he hadn’t hitched up his shorts while he said it, I might have mistaken his words for simply friendly.

  I sat. Not my best move as I was now well below Jeb’s eye level, looking up. “Have you heard the nasty rumors going around?”

  “Kinda busy day yesterday, what with Scott sleepin’ in after all that showboating Friday night. Guess rescue work’s gettin’ a bit much for him. Then I spent last night with my honey. No rumors there, just a heap of lovin.’” Once again, he gave me the eye. I shivered. Okay, he deserved to hear it cold turkey.

  “It’s all over town that you and Vanessa Kellerman are an item, that you deliberately turned Rainbow’s End at an angle across the wake so Martin would be thrown off the bow. Most say you and Vanessa planned it together. A few say you did it all by yourself.”

  Jeb blinked. I could almost swear his skin went pale beneath his year-round tan. Genuine surprise? Possibly. After all, this was a jock who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.

  He dropped his head down into his hands and rocked back and forth, shoulders heaving. I stared. “Jeb?”

  “My fault,” he gasped, “but I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear. I saw Martin crumple and I freaked. Me, steady-as-a-rock Brannigan. For a second there, I lost it. My instinct was to run out there and grab him—”

  I might have made a mistake about Jeb’s acting ability. Then again . . .

  “By the time reality set in—only a second or two—the boat slewed across the wake and over he went. So in a way everybody’s right. I killed him.” Jeb kept his head down, elbows propped on his knees.

  “And you and Mrs. Kellerman?”

  Jeb’s head popped up, body language radiating indignation. “She came on to me a coupla times,” he admitted, “but I’m not into Botox Babes. Not that Nessa’s really old, but I like my women young. My current honey’s jailbait, but her folks don’t mind.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Cary Knight.” Jeb frowned. “So what’s with the questions, Miz Halliday?” My designer name came out with mocking venom. “You trying to help little brother take down a rival?”

  “I liked Martin Kellerman,” I told him quietly. “I’m just trying to figure out how he died. He definitely had an attack of some kind before he fell overboard. I’d just like to know what caused it.” Natural or induced? And why didn’t his wife move a muscle to help him?

  Inwardly, I sighed. As much as I didn’t want to, I was inclined to accept Jeb’s story. Even a Neanderthal like Jeb Brannigan could lose it when he saw Santa Claus toppling toward the Waterway.

  Two berths to the west, a sixty-foot cruiser rumbled to life. “You need to give the police a statement,” I said. “Just tell them what you told me. And it wouldn’t hurt to get your Cary to give a statement as well, saying she’s your steady and she keeps you too busy to have any time for playing around.”

  Jeb raked me with a look that said, You’ve got to be kidding. “What part of jailbait don’t you understand? I’m pushing thirty-three and she’s seventeen. Letting Cary make a statement is like saying, ‘Come and get me.’”

  I sagged even lower on the bait box. “It’s better than being accused of murder.”

  “Not much.”

  He was right. Rape, even statutory rape, was severely frowned on in the State of Florida.

  “The new Chief of Police is a reasonable guy,” I told him. “Talk to him.”

  “My name’s Brannigan, remember?”

  “Boone Talbot didn’t come along until months after your daddy lost his job. He doesn’t
care that your name is Brannigan.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I sighed and heaved myself off the bait box. “Tell Talbot about the parade, exactly what you saw, what you did. He’ll understand. You don’t have to mention Cary, but Talbot’s sharp. I expect he’s going to find out, so I still think you should be upfront about it.” I turned toward the gunnel and gasped. The tide was on the way out, and while Jeb and I talked, the distance back up to the parking lot had grown from a challenging scramble to climbing Everest without a Sherpa guide.

  Jeb unfolded all six feet-four inches from the fishing chair, lips twitching, his cocky self clearly back to normal. He gripped my left arm. “Up on the benchseat, then the gunnel,” he ordered, heaving me into the air as easily as a sack of sugar. “Grab the bollard. Good. One, two, three, hike!” Jeb shifted his hands and boosted me up to the parking lot asphalt. When I got home, I’d have to check for palm prints on my booty. It felt like both nether cheeks had been burned with a branding iron.

  I thanked him and staggered off to my car. As I sank behind the steering wheel, I glanced at my watch. Sunday in Golden Beach, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Chapter 7

  When I pulled into the driveway at home, there was no sign of Scott’s red Corvette, but Mom was whacking weeds with a vengeance. It seemed likely Scott had made his confession, swiftly followed by his escape. Not that a taut atmosphere at home was solely responsible for his disappearance. Yesterday Scott had missed his second busiest day of the week for rescues at sea. Not being on call on Sunday would be total dereliction of duty, no matter what shape he was in. There were a number of routes across the Island; we must have just missed each other.