“What about me?”
“Do you love me?”
I searched frantically for a flippant remark to defuse the intensity, but my mind went blank. I finally spoke from the heart. “God help me, Malcolm, I’ve loved you from the day we met.”
Relief cascaded across his face. “You know I love you, Margaret. Between us, we should be able to figure this marriage thing out.”
He’d kissed me, effectively squelching further protests. Then, while I’d slept a little longer, he’d showered and fixed our breakfast.
Back at my condo and dressed for the day, I went downstairs where Bill waited in the living room and put in a call to Adler.
“I’m going to Lovelace’s funeral this morning,” Adler said. “It’s at the Episcopal Church then burial at Pilgrims’ Rest.”
We’d agreed earlier that, under the circumstances, I should avoid the services. I didn’t trust my mother not to make a scene if she spotted me.
“I’ll be on the lookout,” Adler added, “for any suspicious strangers. Afterward, I’ll do another canvass of the Lovelace neighborhood. See if anyone remembers something they haven’t told us.”
“Or has sighted that cigarette boat again,” I reminded him. “Bill and I are going to Tampa to try to track it down.”
“The forensics accountants should finish their audit of Lovelace’s books today,” Adler said. “That will tell us if there’s a money problem that could have precipitated Lovelace’s murder.”
“I’ll check with you this afternoon,” I said, and hung up.
If the cigarette boat turned out to be a dead end and Lovelace’s books were clean, unless Adler turned up something or someone suspicious at the funeral or on his canvass, our investigation was dead in the water.
Pinellas, a small peninsula on Florida’s West Coast, bounded by St. Pete on the south and Tarpon Springs at the north, is the state’s most densely populated county. In my lifetime, the area had changed from an agricultural paradise of citrus groves and dairy farms rimmed by white sand beaches to a solid mass of residential and business districts, wall-to-wall concrete and asphalt. Roads were constantly clogged with traffic, especially from Thanksgiving to Easter, when the influx of tourists was at its height.
Making our way from Pelican Bay to the Tampa causeway took a hair-raising hour. With a preponderance of drivers who were often elderly and frequently lost on unfamiliar roadways, I literally took my life in my hands every time I stepped into a car and hit the streets. Bill, who was both experienced and cautious, was driving, but I still found myself clutching the arm-rest until my knuckles whitened and pressing my feet against the floorboards, a nervous reaction to idiots on the roads.
The drive across the four-lane causeway, a thin spit of land that traversed Tampa Bay, showcased Florida in all its glory. On both sides of the roadway stretched clear, blue-green water, sparkling in the sun. Palm trees and oleanders separated the asphalt from the strips of beach, and a magnificent cloudless sky arched overhead. With the Northeast crippled by a blizzard and below-freezing temperatures, I understood why people flocked to Florida like migratory birds.
I understood, but I wished they’d stayed home.
We left the causeway, passed Tampa International Airport, and entered Interstate 275, the main artery through the city. After only a few terrifying miles of high-speed gridlock, we exited toward Davis Island and the marina where Bill’s contact worked.
“Makes you glad you don’t have to work in this traffic every day, doesn’t it?” Bill said.
“It wasn’t this bad fifteen years ago.”
He laughed. “Hell, it wasn’t this bad two years ago.”
We parked near the marina and walked to the dry dock. A young man in a paint-stained T-shirt and shorts sat on an overturned 30-gallon drum, his face, exposed by a spattered ball cap worn backward, raised to the sun. When he saw us approach, he set his coffee mug aside and walked to meet us.
“Need some boat work done?” he asked.
“Steve at Rocky Point Boat Repair sent us,” Bill said. “Are you Smitty?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a goofy smile. The kid didn’t seem too bright, as if he’d spent too many hours inhaling paint fumes. “Who wants to know?”
I showed my shield. “Maggie Skerritt, Pelican Bay police. This is Bill Malcolm. We have some questions if you have the time.”
His grin faded with his prospect for profit and his expression turned wary. “What’s this about?”
“We’re trying to locate a cigarette boat,” I said. “Its owner might have witnessed a crime, and we’d like to talk to him.”
“Unfortunately,” Bill added, “all we know is the name of the boat.”
“Jackpot,” I said. “You ever worked on a boat with that name?”
“Is the owner in trouble?” Smitty asked.
“Right now, he’s just a possible witness,” I repeated. “You know the boat?”
“Sure,” Smitty said. “I painted the name on it myself.”
“Recently?”
He scratched his head with a paint-covered finger. “I can’t remember, exactly.”
“You keep records?” Bill asked.
“Yeah,” he said, then grinned sheepishly. “Well, sort of.”
“You mind looking up this boat,” I said, “and telling us the owner’s name and address?”
“I won’t be getting him into trouble, will I? That would be bad for business.”
“If he’s in any trouble, it’s his own doing,” I assured him. “Besides, we don’t have to tell him how we found him.”
The kid’s goofy look brightened at my assurance. He jerked his head toward a small shed at the edge of the dry dock. “I keep my records in there.”
We followed Smitty inside the tiny enclosure, where there was barely room for the three of us, and I discovered that Smitty had used the term “keeping records” loosely. He had no desk, only a wooden shelf nailed across one side of the shed. On it were haphazard stacks of papers and a few spindles crammed with invoices. So many cans of paint and varnish crowded the structure, I was tempted to roll a hazmat team.
“This’ll just take a minute,” Smitty assured us.
Bill and I exchanged doubtful glances.
Twenty minutes later Smitty discovered the invoice he needed at the bottom of the last spindle he’d searched. “Here it is! Jackpot!” he shouted. He gave a chuckle that matched his goofy expression and looked to see if we’d shared his joke.
“And the winner is?” Bill said.
“Huh?”
I guessed Smitty’s sparkling repartee only extended so far.
“Who’s the owner?” I asked.
He handed me the color-smeared invoice. I didn’t see how the kid turned a profit at the rate he wasted paint.
“Jackpot’s owned by Rayburn Price,” I said. “Address listed is on Dundee.”
“That’s off Westshore Boulevard,” Bill said. “Lots of canals that connect to the bay in that area.”
I returned the invoice to Smitty. “Thanks for your help and your time.”
“No problemo,” the kid said. “And if you ever need a cigarette boat painted, I’m your man.”
Bill drove us into downtown Tampa to One Police Center on Franklin Street and dropped me off to meet with Mackley while he searched for a parking space. We were hoping Mackley would help us dig up info on our suspect.
Before entering the building I stopped for a moment at the police memorial, a tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the citizens of Tampa. Instead of a statue of an officer as a monument, the silhouette of a policeman had been cut away from the polished stone, leaving an empty space, a symbol of the hole that the death of an officer leaves in the hearts of the people who loved him. Or her. One of the department’s most recent fatalities was a female officer gunned down during a bank robbery in 2001.
The memorial reminded me to be cautious. Rayburn Price might simply be an innocent boater, a voyeur at worst. Or he could be
a cold-blooded killer. Whatever the case, I didn’t want to be a statistic. On average, a police officer is killed in the line of duty every fifty-two hours in this country, and every year 65,000 criminal assaults, resulting in more than 23,000 injuries, are committed against officers. Funny how any spurious charge of police brutality always made the news, but these statistics were rarely given.
At any rate, the memorial served not only as a reminder of those we’d lost, but also as a warning to those who still worked the streets. When the time came to make an arrest, I’d approach my suspect with caution. And plenty of backup.
After parking the car, Bill joined me and we went inside to meet Mackley. An old friend who’d started with us on patrol before making detective, Abe looked enough like Sipowicz on “NYPD Blue” to be his body double. He led us to his office in the Investigations department and offered us seats and coffee.
We passed on the coffee and I filled Abe in on what we’d learned about Rayburn Price.
“Let me see what I can find.” He sat at his desk and let his fingers fly over the keyboard of his computer, a considerably newer model than the antique on my own desk. After a few minutes he shook his head. “Rayburn’s not in the system. Not even a parking ticket. Your boy is clean.”
“Could he be using an alias?” I asked.
“It’s possible, but unless he’s been arrested under the alias, we’d have no way of knowing about it. Let me check a few data banks, see what else I can find on your boy.”
Mackley’s pudgy fingers were getting a workout, but also results. “Got him,” he said. “Rayburn Price on Dundee. He’s listed in the city business directory. Works as an underwriter for Orange Belt Life Insurance Company. They’re in a building just two blocks over.”
“Life insurance?” Bill and I said in unison.
“Your vic have a policy?” Mackley asked.
“The mother of all policies,” I said. “Ten million double indemnity. But his wife’s the beneficiary.”
“Maybe she has a sweet deal going with Price,” Abe said. “He knocks off the husband and they split the pot.”
“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked.
Abe shoved the telephone toward me and a quick call to Hunt confirmed that the policy he’d written on Lovelace had been with Orange Belt Life.
“You have the paperwork on that policy handy?” I asked.
“Hold on,” Hunt said. “I’ll have my secretary get the file.”
A few minutes later Hunt was back on the line. “I’ve got the file in front of me. What do you need to know?”
“Who was the underwriter?”
The sound of pages turning traveled through the line and Hunt gave a grunt that indicated he’d found what he was looking for. “Underwriter was Rayburn Price. Does that help?”
“Yeah, thanks, Hunt.”
“Margaret?” he said before I could hang up.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry about, uh, you know.”
He was referring to Mother, who was the last person I wanted to discuss at the moment. “It’s okay, Hunt. I understand.”
Bill and Mackley looked at me when I hung up the receiver.
“Well?” Bill said.
“Price was the underwriter on Lovelace’s policy,” I told them with a sinking feeling in my gut. “If we can establish a tie between him and Samantha, it looks as if I arrested the right person after all.”
CHAPTER 16
Rather than drive two blocks and search for another parking spot, Bill and I walked to the Orange Belt Life Insurance building. As a professional courtesy, I’d invited Abe to come along, but he’d declined, asking me to fill him in later on what I learned. I’d seen the stack of case files teetering like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the corner of his desk. He had plenty of work of his own to keep him busy without dogging our steps.
At the insurance company’s receptionist’s desk, we asked to see the head of underwriting and were directed to a fourth-floor office with wide windows overlooking the Hillsborough River and the minarets of the University of Tampa. The name on the desk read Virginia O’Connell. The woman behind the desk was in her fifties, dressed in a navy-blue power suit with a white silk blouse. She wore her dark hair pulled back from her face, and her eyes, framed by silver glasses, regarded us with suspicion.
“Why are the Pelican Bay Police interested in Orange Belt Life?” she asked.
“It’s just routine,” I assured her. “One of your policyholders was murdered in my jurisdiction. I need to check out the beneficiary on his policy.”
I already knew the beneficiary, but I figured if I started nosing around about Rayburn Price right off the bat, Miss Prim-and-Proper would close up tighter than a night-blooming cereus at sunrise.
“Of course,” Ms. O’Connell said. “And what is the name of the deceased?”
“Vincent Lovelace.”
She turned to her computer and typed in the name. “He has a ten-million-dollar policy with his wife Samantha as his beneficiary.”
I made a show of writing down the information and was about to broach the subject of Price when she spoke again. “And another ten-million-dollar policy with Reginald Purdy as beneficiary.”
“Reginald Purdy?” I tried to cover my surprise. “Are you sure?”
The look she shot me would have withered a weaker woman. “Of course.”
“Do you have an address for Purdy?”
“Just a post-office box in Longboat Key.” She gave me the number and zip code.
“Has the payment been made to Purdy?”
She checked her computer again. “The claim form came in yesterday. The check should go out tomorrow. And your other question?”
“Who was the underwriter on the Purdy policy?”
She arched her eyebrows. “Why do you ask?”
“Just routine.” I gave her my warmest smile. “You know how bosses are if you don’t get everything right.”
“Rayburn Price was the underwriter on both policies,” she said. “But that’s not unusual. Mr. Price is one of our best underwriters. He’s been with us fifteen years.”
“And the agent of record on the Purdy policy?” I must have absorbed more of Hunt’s mind-numbing monologues than I’d realized. I was spouting insurance jargon better than the Geico gekko.
O’Connell sighed and turned back to her monitor. “Agent of record on both policies is Huntington Yarborough.”
Again I managed to keep my surprise from showing. “Would it be possible to get copies of the paperwork on those policies?”
The thin set of her mouth revealed her annoyance, but her words were courteous. “Of course.”
She buzzed an intercom and, when her secretary appeared, requested the copies.
While we waited, Bill worked his charm. “You must be a valued member of this company.”
At first, Ms. O’Connell was skeptical. “What makes you say that?”
He nodded toward the windows. “I suspect a lot of your co-workers envy you this office with such a fantastic view.”
It was good cop/bad cop, and Bill was as good as they get. By the time the secretary returned with the copies I’d requested, Bill was oohing and aahing over pictures of Ms. O’Connell’s grandchildren.
The smile she bestowed on us when we left was infinitely warmer than her initial greeting had been.
On the way back from Tampa, we stopped at a Red Lobster on the east end of the causeway. With the lunch crowd gone and the early diners not yet arrived, with the exception of an elderly couple in a corner booth, we had the restaurant to ourselves.
We requested a booth in a corner opposite the old folks and gave our order to the waitress. I stared at the folder Ms. O’Connell had given me.
“Go ahead,” Bill said. “Take a look.”
“I’m gathering my nerve.”
“For what?”
“In case Hunt’s involved.”
Bill blinked in surprise. “Why would you think your brother-in-law is i
n on this?”
I shared Hunt’s proposed book plot about an insurance agent who had planted fake beneficiaries and raked in the dough when the insureds died.
“That doesn’t mean he’s involved,” Bill said. “I’m sure every agent in the business is aware of those kinds of scams.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Besides, Hunt wouldn’t have the balls to pull this off unless Caroline egged him on, and my sister considers crime socially unacceptable.”
I flipped open the folder and pulled out the application for Lovelace’s policy. Hunt’s bold signature in fat black strokes jumped out at me from the bottom of the last page. I turned to the final page of the second app with Purdy as the beneficiary. Hunt’s signature appeared there, too.
Exactly the same. Too much the same.
I grunted in surprise.
“What have you got?” Bill asked.
I detached the final pages of each app, overlapped them, and held them up to the light streaming through the window. The signatures were an exact match. “Someone traced Hunt’s signature.”
“Let me see those,” Bill said.
I slid the apps across the table and he scanned them quickly. “The app for the second policy has the same date as the first. You suppose Hunt’s secretary has a stamp with his signature?”
“Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse,” I said with a terrible foreboding. “Can you imagine Mother’s wrath when I start investigating her favorite son-in-law?”
Before Bill could reply, my beeper sounded. I looked at the number. “It’s Ms. O’Connell at Orange Belt Life.”
With my head still spinning at the prospect of Hunt’s involvement, I hurried to the phone in the lobby and punched in the number of the head underwriter.
“Detective Skerritt,” she said in a low voice that was almost a whisper, “thank God, I reached you. You’d better get back here as quick as you can.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I did some snooping on my own after you left. Did a computer search of all the policies Ray Price has underwritten.”
“And?”
“He’s underwritten six other multimillion-dollar policies that name Reginald Purdy as beneficiary.”
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