“Is Huntington Yarborough the agent?” I held my breath for her answer.
“No, there are six different agents scattered all over the state. Each insured has another policy, apparently written at the same time, to other beneficiaries as well as the one to Purdy. It’s highly irregular. I thought you’d want to know.”
“I’ll come straight back to your office,” I said. “Make me copies, please, but, whatever you do, don’t mention this investigation to anyone, especially Rayburn Price.”
I returned to the booth just as the waitress was serving our meal.
“What’s up?” Bill said.
“We have to go. This case just got a whole lot more complicated.”
After gathering copies of the other policies from Ms. O’Connell, Bill and I returned to One Police Center. Abe provided an empty desk and computer access, and we went to work.
Of the seven named insureds on the life policies, four, including Lovelace, were dead. All had been healthy, rich men in their thirties. Two of the deaths were listed as accidental drownings. A third, a real-estate entrepreneur who’d lived on Captiva Island, had been murdered in what appeared to have been a botched boat accident. That case was still open.
We were not surprised to find that Reginald Purdy, the beneficiary on all seven policies, did not exist. Apparently Rayburn Price had used the info on the bona fide applications to create fake apps for additional policies that left the money to Purdy.
“So Price leaves no trail,” I said. “All he needs is fake ID, available on any street corner, to rent a post-office box and open a bank account in Purdy’s name. He deposits the checks from the insurance company, then transfers the money into his own accounts. As long as the deaths of the insureds appear accidental, nobody’s the wiser.”
“But our boy slipped up,” Bill said. “Eventually, they always do, in spite of the TV and movie myths of the perfect crime.”
I nodded. “Lovelace was supposed to have drowned after the blow to his head. If Price hadn’t had to hold him under, we might have suspected foul play, but we couldn’t have proved Vincent’s death wasn’t accidental.”
Abe offered to place Price under surveillance until I could set up my own network, and Bill and I returned to Pelican Bay. Adler was waiting at my condo when we drove in.
He followed us inside. “Sorry, Maggie, but I came up empty today. No new leads.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a smile, and brought him up to speed on what Bill and I had uncovered.
“Are you going to bring Price in?” Adler asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “but first I’m going to catch him with his hand in the till.”
Adler raised his eyebrows. “How?”
“Ms. O’Connell said the check to Purdy goes out tomorrow. It should hit the Longboat Key post office the next day. That gives us tomorrow to contact the Longboat Key P.D. and set our trap.”
“Collar him when he picks up the mail?” Adler asked.
Bill shook his head. “There’s a bank just across the parking lot from the post office. My guess is that Reginald Purdy has an account there.”
“We’ll check with the bank manager tomorrow to make certain that’s where his account is,” I said. “If so, we’ll nab him when he endorses the check.”
“And if not?” Adler asked.
“We’ll tail him until he stops for a deposit.”
“What about the other guys?” Adler said.
“What other guys?” Bill asked.
“Price’s prospective victims.”
“We’ll notify them tomorrow, too,” I said, “to put them on their guard, but I doubt Price will make another move before he has the money from his most recent kill in the bank.”
“Guess you’ve just about wrapped up Shelton’s Christmas gift,” Adler said.
“I’m not doing this for Shelton,” I said.
“But you know how it is, Maggie.” A boyish grin split Adler’s face. “If Shelton ain’t happy, ain’t none of us happy.”
“None of us will be happy when Ulrich shuts down the department,” I said, “but we might as well get this killer and go out with a bang.”
CHAPTER 17
Two days later the Tampa detectives watching Price called to inform us that the underwriter hadn’t gone to work that day but had left his house and driven south on the Sunshine Skyway, so my team moved into place. With Adler watching the Longboat Key post-office box, Bill keeping an eye on Price’s car in the parking lot, and me waiting in the bank lobby, Rayburn Price didn’t have a chance.
I had studied Price’s DMV mug shot and the photos taken by Abe’s surveillance team until Price’s face was as familiar as my own. Bill gave me a heads-up on the radio when Price strolled into the post office. With a nod to alert the bank manager and my Longboat Key P.D. counterpart, who waited together in the manager’s glass-enclosed office, I took a seat on a vinyl-covered sofa next to the teller line and waited.
Within minutes Price, a tall man in his forties and dressed in expensive casual clothes, sauntered into the bank. He didn’t look like a killer but an average guy running an errand. He stopped at a desk near the entrance, filled out a deposit slip, endorsed a check and stepped to the end of the teller line.
While Price waited for the two people ahead of him to finish their transactions, Adler came into the bank and paused at the desk Price had vacated. Through the double-glass entrance doors, I could see Bill Malcolm, leaning on a car in a handicapped parking spot and watching the front doors.
Price was a cool customer. After all, he’d apparently pulled this stunt several times before and had no reason to suspect any problems. He stood at ease, humming softly under his breath, as if he had all the time in the world. When he reached the head of the line, he handed the young female teller his paperwork.
“Good morning, Mr. Purdy,” she said with a bright commercial smile. “Nice to see you again.”
“It’s a beautiful day.” His voice was warm, deep and pleasant, not what you’d expect a killer to sound like.
“Yes, it is. The kind Florida’s famous for.” With quick efficiency, she processed his deposit, printed out his receipt and handed it to him. “You have a nice day.”
He folded the receipt, tucked it in the pocket of his golf shirt and turned toward the door. But he didn’t get far, because I had stood and blocked his way.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“Of course,” I replied with a smile, but didn’t budge. “By the way, have you heard about the new policy?”
“A new banking policy?”
I nodded. “A safety precaution.”
By now Price was looking around as if not wanting to cause a scene. His brow furrowed over his strange amber-colored eyes.
“Do you work here?” he asked.
“Only for today.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adler moving toward us. “That policy I mentioned? I’m here to insure that you get life—if you’re lucky. Florida also has the death penalty, you know.”
His pupils widened with comprehension, but before he could take a step, Adler was on one side of him, the cop from Longboat Key on the other, and Bill blocked the entrance like a linebacker.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Vincent Lovelace,” I said with great satisfaction, and read him his rights.
Within minutes Price was in cuffs in the back of my car. Adler rode beside him and Bill sat in the passenger seat next to me. During the hour-and-a-half trip back to Pelican Bay, Price didn’t say a word.
I’d called Shelton from the bank to let him know we’d picked up Price, so the crowd of media mobbing the lawn outside the sally port when we returned to the station didn’t surprise me. Shelton had made sure we’d have plenty of witnesses to the perp walk. Price tried to hide his face from the cameras, but with his hands cuffed behind him, his efforts were futile.
As soon as Price had been booked, Shelton shouted down the hall, “Skerritt, I want you in the briefing room. Now!”
<
br /> I hurried to the room where Shelton had set up an impromptu press conference. At the front of the room, he sat at a table that bristled with microphones. In the glare of camera flashes and television lights, he motioned me to a seat beside him.
“I’m happy to announce that we have Rayburn Price, a suspect in the Lovelace murder, in custody,” he announced. “He was apprehended by my officers earlier today in Longboat Key.”
A perky young woman from WFLA raised her hand. “But you’ve already arrested Mrs. Lovelace. Is Price an accomplice?”
“No, Price acted on his own,” Shelton said.
“So you made a mistake,” the reporter continued, “when you arrested Mrs. Lovelace?”
Shelton squirmed like a fish that had been gaffed. He’d ordered me to arrest Samantha, despite my insistence that she was innocent. If I told that to the press, he’d look like an idiot.
I considered for an instant the infinite satisfaction of seeing Shelton’s incompetence exposed on every television set in the Bay area. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The department was on death watch and losing his job was punishment enough.
“We arrested Mrs. Lovelace as a feint,” I said, “so the real killer wouldn’t know we were on to him.”
“And she was okay with that?” a husky correspondent from the Times asked.
I improvised. “Mrs. Lovelace’s primary wish is to see her husband’s killer brought to justice. She was willing to do everything in her power to that end.”
Neither Shelton nor I told the press about Price’s other victims. Those were ongoing investigations that even Shelton knew better than to compromise. He answered a few more questions, then fled to his office with me in tow.
“You did good work, Skerritt,” he said after he’d closed the door.
“I had plenty of help. Adler, Bill Malcolm and the Tampa and Longboat Key departments.” But not from Shelton. He’d been an impediment from the git-go.
Shelton sank into his desk chair like a defeated foe. “It’s good to go out on top.”
“Go out? Are you firing me?”
His eyes were dark hollows. “We’ve all been fired, Maggie. The council voted an hour ago to disband the department the first of February. The sheriff’s office takes over then.”
Even though I had seen it coming, the reality hurt like hell. “I thought the citizens were supposed to vote.”
Shelton shook his head. “The council decided that the savings to the city are so great, they’d be fiscally irresponsible not to push forward with the change. There’s a citizens’ group gathering petitions for a referendum, but by the time they’ve jumped through the necessary legal hoops, they’ll be too late. Once the department’s disbanded, it would cost millions to reinstate it, and the taxpayers won’t go for the expense. That’s what happened in Dunedin, remember?”
I thought of Adler, Johnson, Beaton, Darcy, Kyle and all the other members of the department who’d been my only family for the past fifteen years. “Do the others know?”
Shelton shook his head. “As soon as the media clear out, I’m calling a meeting to announce the council’s decision.”
“Helluva Christmas present,” I said, and left quickly so he’d think I hadn’t seen the tears in his eyes.
CHAPTER 18
I’d never been fond of Christmas, and this year the holidays held even more bittersweet moments than in years past.
The department’s party at the Adlers, our last official gathering, had been tough on everyone. Johnson and Beaton had drunk too much, Lenny Jacobs had made a farewell speech that had us all crying in our eggnog, and Adler had announced that he’d be resigning the first of the year to take the job he’d been offered with the Clearwater department. Everyone had promised to stay in touch, but we’d all been painfully aware that nothing would be the same. Like a household broken by divorce, we’d go our separate ways and never really be a family again.
And I soon discovered that catching Vincent Lovelace’s killer had been no help in restoring me to Mother’s good graces.
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” Caroline had said when she called to congratulate me on Price’s arrest. “You know how she is.”
“I embarrassed her in front of her friends, the un-pardonable sin,” I admitted.
“Hunt thinks you’re brilliant, even if you have stolen his thunder on the book he was planning to write.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.” Having an actual conversation with my sister was also strange, like sailing through uncharted waters.
“We want you and Bill to come over for supper Christmas Eve,” Caroline said. “A nice quiet evening with just the four of us.”
Now I knew I was dreaming. “You’re sure? I don’t want you on the outs with Mother for my sake.”
“We’re sisters, Margaret. And Christmas is for families.”
Her loyalty, especially in the face of Mother’s disapproval, touched me. “I’ll check with Bill and let you know.”
The following Saturday morning, Bill called a few minutes past seven. “Can I pick you up in an hour? I have something to show you.”
“You sound amazingly cheerful for so early in the morning.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I’ve been up a while. With my cases closed, I’ve finally been able to get some decent sleep. And with the department soon to be kaput, I’m looking forward to more nights of uninterrupted rest.”
“Dress warm,” he said with a smile in his voice. “It’s beginning to feel like Christmas out there.”
A check of the Weather Channel after I hung up indicated highs only in the fifties with a wind chill factor in the thirties, so I tugged on jeans and a bulky sweater and was ready when Bill arrived precisely an hour later.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I followed him to his car.
“Not far.”
With his blue eyes twinkling and his self-satisfied expression, he was operating in his it’s-a-secret mode, so further questions were useless. I climbed into his car, fastened my seat belt and prepared to be surprised.
He turned north on Edgewater and drove past the marina into the heart of downtown and parked in front of a two-story building on the corner across from SunTrust Bank. The old brick building there, built in 1905, had been the original bank before their new quarters were erected across the street. Now the old bank’s lower floor held a coffeeshop and bookstore.
Once out of the car, however, Bill bypassed the bookstore entrance and directed me to accompany him down the side street. At the back of the building was another entrance. Bill opened that door and motioned me ahead of him.
I stepped inside and climbed the steep stairs to the second floor.
“These used to be law and medical offices when this building was first built,” Bill said.
“What’s up here now?”
We’d reached the top of the stairs. Bill pointed to a door on the left, where daylight poured through the frosted glass of the top half of a door. “That’s a graphic design studio. And down that hall to your right is an accounting office. But we’re going straight ahead.”
I preceded him down the long hall, then moved aside while he opened a door also topped with frosted glass. He swung the door wide, went in and pulled me inside. “Well, what do you think?”
It was a remarkable space, open and airy with tall sash windows that reached to the top of the ten-foot ceilings and flooded the rooms with light. There was a smaller room immediately to the left, a large open room on the corner of the building that overlooked both downtown and the marina, and a tiny kitchen and bathroom on the right. The heart-pine floors glistened in the sunlight and, even empty, the rooms were cheerful and bright.
“Are you planning to rent this?” I asked.
“Depends on whether you approve.”
I hesitated. The space was attractive, but definitely too small for a household of two. “You’re the one who’d be living here.”
“I don’t intend to live here.
”
He chuckled at my dumbfounded expression, dug into his pocket and handed me a business card. “I was playing around on the computer yesterday and made this up.”
The card, decorated in the upper right-hand corner with the silhouette of a pelican, read, “Pelican Bay Investigations” with the Main Street address of the building in which we stood printed beneath. In the bottom left-hand corner, he’d printed my name, in the right, his.
“This is our new office,” he said, and added hastily, “but only if you like it.”
“I love it.” I glanced around, imagining spending my days in this sunny space, working with Bill. “But can we afford it?”
He quoted the price the real-estate agent had given him.
“Why so low?” I asked.
“No elevator,” he said. “Lots of businesses don’t want a place without one. I figure we can make do, arrange to meet elderly or handicapped clients somewhere else if necessary.”
My footsteps echoed in the emptiness as I walked around the suite from room to room, checking the view from every window, flushing the toilet in the bathroom, turning on the faucets in the kitchen. My old life as a detective was coming to an end, unless I wanted to relocate to another department in another city. But I loved Pelican Bay and didn’t want to leave. The time had come to stop looking back and look ahead.
I glanced up to find Bill watching me with a worried expression. “I love it,” I said again. “Let’s take it.”
With a whoop, he grabbed me in a bear hug and swung me off my feet. When he finally set me down, I was dizzy, both from spinning and apprehension over whether I’d made the right decision.
“We’ll need office furniture,” I said.
“No problem. Secondhand stuff will work fine for us, and we can get it for a song. I’m more worried about a secretary.”
I had a brilliant idea. “What about Darcy Wilkins?”
“The dispatcher?”
I nodded. “Support staff will have a hard time finding new positions. Darcy will need a job, and she’s both reliable and discreet.”
Holidays Are Murder Page 17