“At a religious retreat right here in Pelican Bay.”
“But why?” Jeanette appeared dazed. “We’re Episcopalians.”
I related every detail of my visit with The Teacher and my brief encounter with Alicia, sticking to the facts and omitting my suspicions.
Jeanette, however, was no dummy. “This stinks of a scam.”
“It’s possible.”
“You have to get Alicia out of there.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. She’s an adult and entered Grove Spirit House of her own free will. She would have to be removed by force, and I don’t have that authority.”
“I can’t just let her throw her life away.” Jeanette’s grip tightened on her glass until I feared it would break. “There has to be something her father and I can do.”
“You can try contacting her. If that doesn’t work, I can locate the names of some reliable deprogrammers who might be able to help.” I set aside my tea and pushed to my feet, which were once again comfortably ensconced in sneakers. “For now, at least, my work for you is finished.”
“Please, there’s one more thing.” She was the picture of wild-eyed desperation.
“What’s that?”
“I want you to tell Garth.”
I thought of the postponed wedding plans and the now-empty honeymoon account. “He’ll take the news better if it comes from you.”
Besides, a dentist’s wife couldn’t afford what I’d charge to carry that message.
At 11:00 p.m., I kissed Bill good-night and locked my condo door behind him. After leaving the Langston house, I’d picked up Roger at the office where he’d spent the day with Darcy, and met Bill at my place. He’d brought takeout from the Thirsty Marlin, and I’d filled him in on my findings at Grove Spirit House while we’d eaten. Then we’d taken Roger for a long walk along the waterfront park on the west side of Edgewater Drive.
I was climbing the stairs to bed when the doorbell rang. Roger barked and raced to the front door. I wondered for a second if Bill had forgotten something, but he had a key and could have let himself in. Back downstairs, I turned on the porch light and stared through the peephole at a set of broad shoulders.
“Who is it?”
A deep voice sounded through the closed door. “Garrett Keating with the sheriff’s office. I need to talk to you.”
A wallet-size folder with a detective’s badge and ID appeared in front of the peephole.
I scooped up Roger and opened the door.
“Margaret Skerritt?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“I just have a few routine questions. Okay if I come in?”
I’d been a detective too many years and had used that same line too often to believe Keating’s visit was just routine. From the tone of his voice and the grim set of his face, I knew without doubt someone somewhere was in trouble.
I hoped it wasn’t me.
CHAPTER 7
I stood aside and Keating stepped in. To his credit, he patted Roger’s head.
“Nice dog,” he said. “I like dogs.”
A tall man, whose polo shirt exhibited well-developed muscles in all the right places, Keating with his dark hair, gray eyes and square jaw had the right combination of male attributes to make any woman’s hormones sit up and take notice. He even smelled good. But he was also at least ten years my junior—and, more important, he wasn’t Bill.
“Let me put Roger in his crate in the kitchen.” I motioned down the hall toward the living room. “Go on in.”
Wondering why the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office had sent a detective to my place so late at night, I stowed Roger in his kennel and met Keating in the living room.
“You’re working late,” I said.
He nodded. “You know how it is.”
With hundreds of cases that had kept me up nights, I knew exactly how it was—and it wasn’t good. A dire possibility hit me out of the blue, and the blood rushed from my head. In a wave of dizziness, I groped for a chair and sank into it.
“You okay?” Keating’s voice seemed to come from far away.
I struggled to speak past the fear that closed my throat. “Tell me you’re not here about Bill, that he’s okay.”
“Bill?”
“Bill Malcolm. He just left a while ago. There hasn’t been an accident?”
Strong hands shoved my head toward the floor. “Breathe deep. I’m not here about anyone named Bill.”
The dizziness passed, and I sat upright, flushed with relief and feeling incredibly stupid, since I should have known, if I hadn’t panicked, that detectives didn’t make those kinds of calls. If Bill had been hurt in an accident, a uniformed deputy, not a detective, would have knocked at my door.
“Sorry,” I said. “You caught me by surprise. I was afraid—” My ramblings were only making me look sillier. “Why are you here?”
Keating folded his muscular frame into a chair across from me and was watching me like a fox eyes a chicken. “Like I said, routine questions.”
“There’s no such thing. What’s going on?”
“Are you willing to tell me everything you did today? Everywhere you went?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t? Should I have a lawyer?”
His body was relaxed but his eyes remained alert. “Did you do something that makes you think you need a lawyer?”
How many times had I speared a suspect with that barb? I did a mental review of my day. The only thing I’d done that hinted of impropriety was to impersonate my mother. Surely I couldn’t be thrown into the slammer for that, unless my mother had pressed charges. And even my mother wouldn’t go that far. But only because she wouldn’t want the bad press.
I relaxed and sat back in my chair. “My conscience is clean. What do you want to know?”
“Where were you this morning?”
“Grove Spirit House at the end of Hidden Lake Road.”
His laser gaze didn’t flicker and made me feel like a bug skewered on a pin. I wondered how often I’d produced that same effect in people I’d interrogated. I didn’t like being hoisted on my own petard.
“What were you doing there?” Keating asked.
“I’m a private investigator. I was hired by a client to locate her missing daughter. I found her at Grove Spirit House.”
“Who was she?”
“Why do you want to know?” I considered the ethics of the situation and whether my answering would violate codes of confidentiality.
Keating sighed. “Look, I know you were a detective. Hell, you’re probably better at this than I am, so let’s quit beating around the bush. Tell me about Alicia Langston. What did you see at Grove House?”
“Has someone filed a complaint against that creep?”
“Who?”
“The Teacher. I don’t know his real name.”
Keating grimaced. “Yeah, someone complained.”
Probably Jeanette Langston. “About damned time. The guy is lower than pond scum.”
“Tell me about your visit.”
If I could help nail a con artist, I was happy to talk. I told Keating what Julianne Pritchard had told me and how I’d gone to Grove Spirit House to find Alicia.
“And you found her?”
I nodded. “She was working in the kitchen.”
“Doing what?”
I thought back to my brief encounter. “Besides salivating over her mentor? She was rinsing peas in a colander.”
He scribbled in a small notebook he’d pulled from his shirt pocket. “Did you see anyone else?”
“Only Celeste, The Teacher’s assistant. He told me Celeste and Alicia were the only people there, but he’s expecting a group Friday for a weekend retreat.”
“Any sign of tension between Alicia and this teacher?”
“Nothing, other than obvious sexual tension on her part. She appeared about as smitten as they come. But he hardly noticed her, except to warn me that she was under a vow of silence.”
Keating raised his ey
ebrows. “A punishment?”
“No, apparently part of the initiation into communing with the Universal Spirit. His words, not mine.”
“And Celeste? Any tension between her and the others?”
“She disappeared after greeting me at the main pavilion. I didn’t see her again.”
He flipped his notebook closed, stowed it in his pocket and rose to his feet. “Thanks, Ms. Skerritt. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Do you have grounds to charge this teacher?”
“Charge him?”
“He’s obviously working a con, but since he’s operating under the guise of religion, I can’t think of any law that he’s breaking. You can’t arrest someone for simple greed.”
Keating’s handsome face darkened. “I won’t be arresting The Teacher.”
“That’s too bad. But if you’re not investigating his scam, what’s this about?”
He paused, as if reluctant to continue. “The Teacher, aka Willard Ashton, died this afternoon.”
I blinked in surprise. “But not from natural causes or you wouldn’t be here.”
Keating nodded.
“Have you made an arrest?”
“I can’t—” He glanced at his watch. “What the hell. You’ll read it in the morning papers anyway. We arrested Alicia Langston. And, after what you and Celeste have told me, it’s a slam-dunk case.”
The next morning I sat in my office, reading the Tribune’s account of Willard Ashton’s murder and Alicia’s arrest, while Bill, ensconced on the sofa with Roger snuggled tightly against him, perused the Times.
Frustrated, I folded the paper and tossed it on to my desk. “Nothing else in here besides what Keating already told me.”
Bill set his paper aside. “No more here either. We don’t even know how Ashton died.”
“I tried pumping Keating last night, but he refused to share. Can’t blame him. I’d have done the same if it had been my case. He could have called Alicia merely a person of interest but instead implied it’s an open-and-shut investigation. He’s convinced Alicia’s guilty.”
Bill raised his eyebrows. “And you’re not?”
I shook my head. “Nothing fits. Garth insisted his fiancée is compassionate, spiritual. Julianne claimed her friend was mesmerized by Ashton, which tracks with what I observed. If Alicia was the killer, there had to be some extenuating circumstance.”
“Mental instability?” Bill rose to his feet, and Roger hopped off the sofa.
“If you count crazy in love.”
“There’s a fine line between love and hate, especially when passions run high.”
My frustration increased. “We can’t even make an educated guess without the facts of the case.”
“And Keating’s not talking,” Bill said with a shrug.
On the bookcase where he was now observing morning traffic, Roger perked up his ears at the ringing of a phone in the reception area.
“And,” I scratched at the mild hives that had risen on my forearms, my usual reaction to homicide, “we’ll not know those facts until trial, since it’s not our case.”
Darcy popped her head in the door. “It is now.”
Darcy had an uncanny ability to hear all conversations, even through a closed door. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have suspected she’d bugged my office.
“Alicia Langston’s defense attorney is on the phone,” Darcy said. “Teresa Pender, line one.”
Darcy returned to her desk, and I shot Bill a questioning look. “Should we take it?”
“The phone call?”
“Alicia’s case.”
“Why don’t you hear what Pender has to say?”
I picked up the phone. “Maggie Skerritt here. What’s up, Terry?”
The scrappy little attorney had been defending criminals with all the tenacity of a terrier for as long as I’d been arresting them. On several occasions, I’d endured her hard-hitting cross-examinations on the witness stand. We’d never been friends, but I respected the lawyer. She had ethics, more than I could say for too many others who practiced her specialty of the law.
“Have you read about Alicia Langston’s arrest?” Terry asked.
“Not only that, Detective Keating paid me a visit last night.”
“Makes sense. Mrs. Langston told me you’d gone to Grove Spirit House yesterday. There’s more to this case than meets the eye. Either the cops haven’t found it or they’re not talking. I need an investigator.”
“And your client’s innocent, of course?”
Terry surprised me by saying, “I don’t want to prejudice you. Ask her yourself.”
“When?”
“She’s being arraigned this morning. I’ll take you to visit her this afternoon. Meet me at the jail at three?”
“As long as one thing’s clear,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“If our agency investigates, we share all our findings with the police, even if they implicate Alicia.”
“Once a cop, always a cop, eh, Maggie?”
“So they tell me.”
“We’re on the same side here,” Terry said. “We’re both looking for the truth.”
With any other defense attorney, I’d have laughed at the claim, but Terry was a cut above the rest. She meant what she said.
“See you at three,” I said and hung up.
“So we’re taking the case?” Bill asked.
“I’ll let you know after I’ve talked to Alicia.”
Bill headed for the door.
“More background checks?” I asked.
He turned. “Yeah, but not for the Historical Society. Just out of curiosity, I’ll see what I can find out about Willard Ashton. He’s probably scammed plenty of people who’d want him dead. And I’ll also try to get a look at the crime scene.”
“But we haven’t decided to work for Terry yet.”
He pointed to the splotches on my forearms. “When murder gives you hives, I figure we’re in this till the case is solved and the spots disappear.”
Bill blew me a kiss and left.
Darcy buzzed me on the intercom. “Your mother’s on line two.”
“Did you tell her I was here?”
“I said I’d check. You want me to tell her you’re out?”
I was tempted but resisted. “That excuse is wearing thin. I have to talk to her sometime. I might as well get it over with.”
I’d been avoiding Mother’s calls for days. She never contacted me unless she either wanted something or had orders to give. She was anxious to finalize her plans for my elaborate wedding, and I’d hoped by putting her off that she’d be too late to make the appropriate arrangements and would finally cease and desist.
But she was my mother, she had been seriously ill, and she was now pushing her eighty-third birthday. Guilt prompted me to pick up the phone and face the consequences.
“Good morning, Mother. How are you?”
I don’t know why I bothered to ask. Mother, who always exhibited a strange reluctance to discuss her health, would reply that she was fine. To determine the true state of her well-being, I’d have to ask Caroline, who would then ask Estelle, who had been Mother’s live-in housekeeper since I was a child.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Mother responded according to her usual script, “but I was beginning to worry that you’d fallen off the face of the earth, Margaret. It’s a relief to know you’re alive and well.” Mother cloaked her sarcasm in such a soft, sweet tone, it took a few seconds to realize I’d been zinged.
“Business is booming.”
“Not too booming for you to have lunch with your mother today, I hope?”
When she referred to herself in the third person, I knew I was in trouble, so I bit the bullet. I could always use my meeting with Terry Pender as an excuse for a quick getaway. “Of course not, Mother. Shall I meet you at the club?”
The Yacht Club, bastion of Pelican Bay’s rich and famous, was Mother’s favorite hangout, but I always felt awkward
and out of place in the elegant and exclusive surroundings.
“No, Estelle is preparing lunch here.”
I should have felt relieved, but I didn’t. I didn’t have to be prescient to know that Mother had an agenda.
“Just the two of us?” If Caroline wasn’t coming as backup, maybe I could persuade Mother to give up her scheme for my fancy nuptials.
“There’s someone at the door,” Mother replied. “I’ll see you at noon.”
With a feeling of foreboding, I hung up the phone. I feared the wedding-planning trap had been sprung.
CHAPTER 8
I arrived at Mother’s fifteen minutes early, so I circled the Mediterranean-style waterfront mansion, designed by Misner in the 1920s, and knocked on the kitchen door.
Estelle greeted me with an enthusiastic hug. “Where you been, Miss Margaret? I haven’t laid eyes on you in a month of Sundays.”
Her white summer uniform was a contrast to her ebony skin but a perfect match for her snowy hair. The last time I’d visited, I’d encouraged her to retire, but Estelle had been horrified at the suggestion. She considered the Skerritts her family, and, in all the ways that mattered, we were.
I perched on a stool beside the counter while Estelle washed romaine in the deep farmhouse sink. The kitchen, with its white cabinets, tall windows and black-and-white tile floor, was the only room in the house where I’d grown up that I truly felt at home. I’d spent more time here with Estelle than I’d ever shared with my socialite mother. Priscilla had always been consumed with committees and charity work, and Daddy had spent long hours at his office and the hospital. With Caroline mortified to be seen with her bratty younger sister, Estelle had been the one constant companion of my youth.
“How’s your Mr. Malcolm?” Estelle asked. “I hear you two bought a house.”
“We have. Call me on your next afternoon off and I’ll take you to see it.”
I’d enjoy showing our place to Estelle, who would be genuinely pleased for us and lavish much praise on our simple abode. I had yet to suggest a tour for Mother. I feared if she followed her usual pattern, she’d find fault with everything from the neighborhood to the lack of square footage to the decor, casting a pall on my happiness with our choice.
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