“And now this.”
“Yes. And now this. Thanks for telling me about Angie’s experience. Wright may have flown to and from Naples as she claims, but she could have rented a car in Naples and driven to Miami. In fact, now that I think about it, she could have driven to Key West from Naples or from Miami, killed Alexa, driven back to Naples, and caught her scheduled flight home.”
“Could you ever prove she did that?”
“With a lot of leg work, I might be able to. I’d have to go to Naples and talk with car rental people. They keep careful records. If Wright rented a car, there’s a record of it somewhere.”
“Could she have used a phony name?”
“Anything’s possible. It’s easy to get fake IDs.”
“She could have borrowed a car from a friend,” Beck said.
“That would be harder to check on.”
“Will you try?”
“I don’t know yet, but several things about Elizabeth Wright don’t ring true. I’m not through thinking about her and about what bearing she may have on the Chitting case.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not just yet, but you’ve given me fresh facts to think about. Sometimes plugging into another person’s thinking helps me see the fallacies in my own reasoning.”
“You miss your partner, don’t you?”
“Yes. We bounce ideas off each other when we’re on a case, but I’d really like to solve Alexa’s murder on my own.”
“Success builds confidence. Why not tell me your thoughts about Elizabeth Wright? I’ll try to be impartial, but frankly there’s something about that woman I detest.”
“She won’t let me see any of the documents concerning the Cayo Hueso project. They’re public information, yet I can’t get to see them and that stinks.”
“What reason does she give?”
“First she said they were in Tallahassee, but when I called that office they said copies of the documents were in Key West. When I confronted her with that information, she made a pretense of having her secretary search for the file, but of course it was missing. The secretary seemed genuinely surprised, but Elizabeth didn’t.”
“A file missing right when it’s needed. Some coincidence.”
“Yeah. For some reason she’s withholding that file. And she acts smug about it, too.”
“Why wouldn’t she want you to see it?”
“Good question. I’m certainly no expert on blueprints or contracts.”
“Maybe she resents your friendship with Rex. Being difficult could be her way of getting even.”
“She may be using the file as a red herring. Maybe she’s flaunting her authority to try to keep my attention focused on those papers so I’ll overlook something else that’s far more important to the Chitting case.”
“That’s an interesting thought. What did you hope to find in the documents?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes a detective never knows what he’s interested in until he sees it. But since that housing project loomed uppermost in Alexa Chitting’s thinking, I thought the papers might in some way reveal clues that could lead to her murderer.” Katie eased her chair from the table and stood.
“There’s still more coffee.”
“Thanks, but I must go. I appreciate your sharing this information. I feel sure that it fits into this tangle somewhere. Now I have to figure out where.”
“You’re welcome, dear child.” Beck followed Katie to the steps. “Let me know how your investigation progresses.”
“I will.”
Instead of going home, Katie jogged through the chilly morning to her office. Beck’s story galvanized her into action. Elizabeth Wright’s alibi sucked. Her refusal to relinquish the Cayo Hueso file not only piqued Katie’s curiosity, but it also rekindled her anger. She prepared to take action that could either fast forward her investigation or cause her a multiplicity of police problems.
Saturday. A good time for breaking and entering. The Office of Community Affairs would be closed for the weekend. She tucked her picklocks, miniature tape recorder, and the tiny camera she used for photographing documents into her shoulder bag and headed for Simonton Street.
TWENTY-FIVE
She had jogged only a block or so when she paused, then backtracked to Flagler Avenue and headed north toward the Salvation Army Store. The thought of breaking and entering in the daylight flashed caution signals in her mind although she knew the police would be concentrating most of their activities on Front Street and Mallory Square, watching the traffic as tourists took to their cars to avoid the abrasive wind. Cops would give scant attention to Simonton Street offices until darkness made them fair game for druggies needing some bucks for the crack house.
She needed a lower profile. The police knew her by sight. She wore khaki shirts and skirts like a uniform during working hours, and blonde hair attracted attention. Someone on the force might even be following her. She regretted having gone to the department to talk with Lt. Brewer. If he thought she was trying to make trouble for his son over the bridge accident, he might try to retaliate.
As she entered the thrift shop, where several women were looking through the dresses on a circular rack just inside the front door, she planned her disguise. Why was she feeling like a nervous Nellie? Nobody was watching her. The building held the stale air and heat of previous days, maybe even previous months, and she wiped perspiration from her upper lip. To her left, a clerk rang up a sale then stuffed a pair of scuffed Wrights and a silk designer tie into a plain brown bag for an unshaven man wearing faded red sweats.
She reflected on the man’s epicurean taste as she walked to a wall where headgear was displayed on aluminum hooks that protruded from a pegboard. She chose a navy and white babushka, then moved on to a rack of sport clothes where she selected an ankle-length jeans skirt and jacket. Completing the outfit with a white tank top, she carried the clothes to a makeshift dressing room at the back of the store and tried them on under the glare of a bare bulb suspended from a ceiling cord.
“Close enough,” she muttered, checking the fit in a crazed wall mirror hanging in a baroque frame.
She slipped back into her own clothing and carried her new outfit to the checkout clerk.
“Will this be all, miss?” The woman rang up the sale.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“That’ll be three dollars and fifty cents, please.”
She paid for the clothes and carried them toward the store entrance, waiting until another customer held the clerk’s attention before she slipped back to the dressing room and changed into the disguise. Tucking her hair under the babushka, she put on her sunglasses. Even Bubba wouldn’t recognize her in this outfit. She folded her khaki clothes, placed them in the brown sack, and left the store, stopping at her office long enough to leave the sack on her desk.
Once again she headed toward Simonton Street, buttoning her jacket as she fought the wind. When she reached the sea-green cottage that housed the Office of Community Affairs, she approached the entry and tried the door. No point in breaking in if some feckless employee might have accidentally left the door unlocked.
No such luck. She knocked three times to make sure nobody was inside.
“That office be closed on Satiddays, Ma’am,” a woman called from across the street. “No open again until the Monday morning.”
“Thank you,” she called to the woman, then she arched in her shoulder bag for pen and paper and pretended to write a note which she stuck in the screen door. By the time she finished, the woman was hurrying on down the street, her head lowered into the wind.
Katie left the office’s front entrance, walking along the side of the building to the back door, snagging her skirt on thorny bougainvillea, and watching carefully for anyone who might be observing her. She saw nobody. A high fence much like the one around Rex’s tropical garden offered the privacy she needed and she pulled out her picklocks.
Her first and second attempts to open the lock failed, b
ut on the third try, the mechanism gave way to her manipulations and she entered the office, closing the door behind her. It was that easy. Mac would have been proud of her B and E expertise.
At one time the structure had been a shotgun house, built with a long hallway separating the front and back doors and with small rooms opening off each side of the corridor. She followed the narrow passage to the front office where shades had been drawn for the weekend. Good. Although she moved about the premises without fear of detection from anyone passing by outside, her hands began to sweat. She wiped her palms on her skirt.
Methodical. She had to be methodical. Check the file cabinets first. She approached the steel file cabinets behind the secretary’s desk, opening the top drawer and searching the folders quickly.
“Cayo Hueso. Not here.” She checked every folder to make sure she hadn’t overlooked the Cayo Hueso papers. Miss Scarlet Fingernails hadn’t lied. The folder wasn’t in the file. As her gaze fell on the secretary’s desk, she moved to it and began checking its drawers. Letterheads. Envelopes. Stamps. Computer paper. The bottom drawer held a half-filled bottle of gin, an almost empty bottle of tonic water, and three paperback romances. Telling details. She always found another person’s choice of reading material fascinating.
Perhaps Wright had hidden the file in her private office. Katie entered that room, again tripping slightly on the rattan rug and touching the doorjamb for support.
“You should get that rug fixed, Liz. Tacky really isn’t your style.”
She stood in the doorway studying the office. A former bedroom? That would account for the closet in the corner. Walking first to the oak desk, she paused. Had Wright left markers so she could tell later if her office had been disturbed? Katie examined the drawer openings for telltale bits of paper or fabric, but she found none. She began searching. The top drawer contained only ballpoints, paper clips, emery boards. She touched a bottle of nail gloss and a lipstick, noting the trendy shade and pricey brand.
The side drawers proved equally uninteresting: State Department bulletins, manuals, an old newspaper. She jumped when the telephone rang. Who would be calling on Saturday? A wrong number, perhaps. Or had Elizabeth Wright planned to be here to accept a call? That put her on guard. But unlikely. Wright wasn’t the type to spend her weekends slaving for the State Department. The phone rang ten times. She didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until the ringing stopped.
What if Elizabeth had been expecting a call? What if? What if? A growing sense of urgency made her hurry. The bottom desk drawer was locked, but after a few minutes it opened to her deft probing with a picklock. Bonanza. A red folder bearing the words CAYO HUESO PROJECT lay on top of some books. She laid the folder on the desk, pulled her special camera from her shoulder bag and began photographing the pages. Sketches. Contracts. Proposals. Letters. She had no time to read them now.
A burgeoning sense of impending danger made it hard for her to keep the camera steady, yet she must. Holding her breath while she clicked the shutter helped, but it also made her conscious of her jackhammer heart. Could Alexa Chitting’s death in some way be connected with the information in these papers? Why else would Wright have denied her access to this folder and have locked it in her private desk? Again she paused to wipe her damp hands on her skirt.
It took several minutes to photograph every page of the file, and her hands were shaking as she started to replace the folder in the bottom drawer exactly as she had found it. Then she stopped, staring at the small books that had been lying under the file folder.
“Bank books. Blue. Red. Brown. So many of them.” She counted eleven checking account books, then she examined them more closely. Each book showed a deposit of nine thousand dollars, made on the date of Alexa’s murder.
“Ninety-nine thousand dollars,” Katie muttered, sitting down in Elizabeth’s desk chair as the full impact of this find hit her. One thousand dollars less than the amount Po said Alexa had withdrawn from her account just before her death.
She stacked the bankbooks in a neat pile and began examining each one again, muttering the bank names to herself. “Naples First National. Security Savings Bank of Naples. First Fidelity Bank. Miami Savings and Loan. Miami First National. Flagler Street Bank of Miami.” Three of the banks were located in Naples and eight in Miami. All the books had been issued in Elizabeth Wright’s name.
Picking up her camera, she photographed the first and only entry in each of the books. She was just replacing them in the bottom drawer when she heard a key scrape against the front door lock. Someone was coming.
A pulse hammered at her temple and her throat as she looked around for a hiding place. It was too late to flee from the building. She heard the door lock turn, heard the door open.
Hide. Hide.
The kneehole of the desk?
The closet?
If the intruder was Elizabeth Wright, she would surely beeline to her desk. Katie opted for the closet.
She opened the door, slipped inside, then left the door slightly ajar so she could watch a part of what went on in the room. The stuffy cubicle reeked of ammonia, sweeping compound, a lemon-scented dust cloth. What if she sneezed! What if the intruder came to the closet for something? She looked behind her, and now that her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she could make out a carton of paper towels large enough to hide her if she hunkered and ducked her head. The thought offered slight comfort.
Again she jumped as the telephone rang. Now she saw Elizabeth Wright hurry to answer it, tripping slightly over the frayed carpet as she entered the room. Another time Katie might have laughed, but not today. She listened carefully, wishing she could reach her tape recorder without making any noise, but no way. Elizabeth stood too close to the closet door. She would hear the rustle of clothing, the shifting of weight on the old floorboards.
The conversation was meaningless—a series of yes and no answers on Wright’s part. She replaced the receiver, then opened the top drawer of her desk and proceeded to write a note that she placed in the center of her blotter. Katie watched as Wright opened each side desk drawer, and again Katie held her breath. There had been no time to lock the bottom drawer. She never doubted that Wright would notice.
Katie watched. When the drawer glided open, she saw Wright’s body stiffen.
“Who…” the word escaped involuntarily. Wright, counted the bankbooks, stuffed them into her shoulder bag, then relocked the drawer.
Katie barely breathed, hoping Wright would take the books and leave. Instead, she turned and eyed the open closet door. Then she looked at her bottom desk drawer again. Katie could see Elizabeth Wright’s hand tremble as she fumbled in her bag then pulled out a small gun, aiming it at the closet door.
“Who’s in the closet? I know someone’s there. Come out with your hands up.”
TWENTY-SIX
When she saw the gun, Katie’s mind flashed back to the classroom scene, to Jon McCartel, to another shooting. Fear turned her to stone. Trapped by her own foolishness! Why had she come here without telling someone where she would be? The locked drawer. The Cayo Hueso file. The bankbooks. They were adding up to her death. A gut feeling told her that Elizabeth Wright had murdered Alexa and that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill again. It would be easier the second time.
“Come out with your hands up.”
The low, deadly voice prompted Katie to squirm farther to the back of the closet where she crouched behind the carton of towels. She could no longer see the woman or the gun, but the floorboards creaked as footsteps approached, and light flooded in as Elizabeth Wright flung open the door and stepped inside the closet. Katie looked into the gun barrel.
“So it’s you!” Contempt roughened Wright’s voice and she backed into her office. “Get up!”
Katie stood.
“Place your hands on your head and come out of there.”
Katie obeyed, standing just outside the closet door and feeling more vulnerable than she had felt in all her life.
> “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for the Cayo Hueso file.” She forced strength into her voice. “Those documents are public records and I have a legal right to see them. You’re breaking the law by withholding them.”
“And my office is private property. You’ve no legal right to be here. I’ll call the police and have you arrested for trespassing, for breaking and entering, for…you…you scum. And you found the bankbooks too, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” No point in lying. “The arresting officers you plan to call will probably find the bankbooks most interesting. Where did all that money come from? That’s the very first question they’ll ask you. Where did it come from?”
“None of your business!” A flush flooded Wright’s neck and rose to her hairline, making her face look drawn and raddled. “You’ve seen too much, Katie Hassworth, P.I.” She steadied the gun with both hands.
“So before I die, tell me about the bankbooks.” She forced bravado into her voice, but her arms were beginning to ache, and she had to fight to keep her body from shaking. Was the gun Elizabeth Wright held the same gun that had fired a shot into Alexa’s wall hanging?
“I’ll tell you nothing.” She reached for the telephone.
“The money came from Alexa Chitting, didn’t it?”
Wright’s lips parted, but she didn’t answer.
“Don’t look so surprised. Po told me that Alexa had withdrawn a hundred thou from her account the Friday before her death, receiving it in cash. But he didn’t know what she had done with it.”
“The Chitting affairs are none of my concern.”
“Why did Alexa give you the hundred thou?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice sounded less sure. “Po Chitting knew nothing of his wife’s business dealings.”
“So you were concerned with Chitting affairs. You’re contradicting yourself.”
“It’s common gossip that the Chittings didn’t get along, that Alexa ran the marina.”
Conch Shell Murder Page 18