Spring Break

by Charlotte Douglas

  Madison’s entire body language screamed deception, and I recalled the hooker’s description of Deirdre’s killer, one that could fit Madison in the proper clothes. Would he have killed Deirdre to protect his employer?

  “Can this friend verify where you were and when?”

  The butler’s face turned beet-red. “You are not an officer. You have no authority to question me.”

  “Fine. I’ll have Mrs. Branigan ask you.”

  “No, wait.” He took a deep breath and gave me the name of a gay watering hole in Dunedin. “The bartender there can vouch for me. I’d rather not have my friend involved.”

  I wrote the name of the bar in the notebook I carried in my blazer, not chancing the information to the mercy of my short-term memory. As I shoved the notes back into my pocket, Stella entered from the back of the house. A young woman, dressed in a dark pants suit and low-heeled shoes and moving with brisk efficiency, accompanied her.

  “Remember,” Stella was saying, “I want the table decor and the food presentation subdued, but nothing drab or dreary. All in the best of taste. We’re celebrating my husband’s life, after all.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Branigan,” the woman said. “I’ll prepare some sample menus as soon as I return to the office and fax them to you.”

  “And will you have time to prepare,” Stella said, “so that all will be ready when we return after the funeral tomorrow?”

  “I’ll hire extra help if needed,” the caterer said. “You won’t be disappointed.”

  Madison pivoted on his heel as if relieved to escape me and hurried to open the door for the departing caterer. Stella seemed to notice me for the first time.

  With her black silk dress accentuating her pallor, she appeared every inch the grieving widow. Shadows beneath her eyes denoted lack of sleep, and she clasped a linen handkerchief in one hand, ready for tears, whose previous appearance had already streaked the coral blush on her cheeks. Although her dress and shoes were impeccable and every hair was in place, she looked harried and slightly befuddled.

  “Hello, Margaret. I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but I’m expecting several hundred people after the funeral tomorrow, and there’s so little time to plan.”

  “I know you’re busy, but if you could answer a few questions, you could help with my investigation.”

  “Of course.”

  She gestured toward the living room, and I preceded her into the space where Carlton’s portrait gazed down on us from above the mantel. I sat on the sofa, and Stella sank into a chair as if her legs had given way. She reached into a sterling silver box, retrieved a cigarette and lit it with a matching silver lighter.

  After filling her lungs with smoke, she slowly exhaled. “Have you any idea yet who killed my husband?”

  “We’re checking into several suspects who threatened him in the past.”

  “George Ulrich?” Her lips twitched if his name left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “The police have questioned him, but his involvement seems unlikely.”

  Stella shook her head, her eyes dazed. “I still can’t believe it. Carlton was so alive, so vibrant, with so much he wanted to do in life. I still expect to see him striding through the door, ready for the next challenge.”

  “How did he and Sidney get along?”

  Her eyes cleared and she smiled. “They were very close. Sidney worshipped his father, and Carlton was proud of his son.”

  “No tensions or arguments?”

  She shook her head, seemingly undisturbed by my line of questioning. “The only problem Sidney ever had with Carlton was that his father was away so much, especially while Sidney was growing up. As a little boy, all Sidney ever wanted was to spend time with Carlton and be just like him.”

  “And now?”

  “They spent whatever time they could together, but with Carlton in Tallahassee so much of the year and Sidney with his own family to occupy him…” Her voice trailed off, her lips quivered, and tears welled in her eyes. She dabbed at them with her linen handkerchief. “Poor Sidney. Carlton’s death has devastated him.”

  If a family feud had existed, I couldn’t prove it by Stella. I was running into dead ends every direction I turned. “Can you think of any enemies, other than the political ones I mentioned, who would have wanted Carlton dead?”

  She shook her head and smiled through her tears. “Carlton had a warm, wonderful personality that drew people like a magnet. Even his opponents liked him.”

  With a few notable exceptions, I thought, the main one being whoever had strangled him to death in a rage. And if that person was merely an anonymous face in the crowd, someone who had stepped briefly into the life of a man known to his assailant only through the media, finding that killer would be like searching for a specific grain of sand on a broad beach.

  “Thanks for your help.”

  I rose to my feet and headed toward the door. If I intended to find Carlton Branigan’s killer, I had a lot of sifting to do.

  CHAPTER 13

  After turning up nada during my interview with Stella, I pointed my trusty Volvo toward Pelican Bay and the hospital. Although I’d visited since Mother had been admitted, I hadn’t actually spoken with her yet, and, except for Caroline’s assurances, Mother didn’t know I’d been there. I found myself confronted with a lose/lose scenario. She didn’t really want to see me, but she’d be even more pissed off if I didn’t show up to pay my respects.

  I was waiting for the light at Fort Harrison and Turner and contemplating that sad state of affairs, when brakes squealed behind me, and I was jolted by the impact of a vehicle that had rear-ended mine. In an instant, the force of the collision threw my body against the seat belt, and my head whiplashed against the headrest.

  Already irritated by three investigations that were going nowhere fast and the prospect of a visit with my mother, I threw the gearshift into Park, switched off the engine, stepped out of the car and walked toward the back of it. A sporty, small-sized SUV had struck my rear bumper, and my usual patience, which I’d sustained with care during my career as a cop, evaporated like sea mist in the warm spring air.

  I stood at the rear of the Volvo, hands on my hips, and surveyed the damage to my trunk and my bumper, minimal thanks to the Volvo being built like a tank but a major annoyance in my current frame of mind.

  Two college-age kids climbed out of the SUV. The boy, sunburned with sun-streaked hair, was dressed in swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt. His curvaceous dark-haired companion wore a bikini topped by a damp T-shirt, emblazoned with the Guess logo. From the generous size of her chest, I guessed implants.

  My head was aching from the pounding my brain had taken from slamming into my skull at impact. I waved my arm at my dented bumper and damaged paint job and shouted, “What the hell were you doing? Don’t you watch where you’re going? Didn’t you notice there was a car and a red light in front of you?”

  Before I could ask if they had a cell phone to call the police, the boy’s eyes widened.

  “She’s packing heat!” he screamed, and dived back through his open door. The girl ducked behind her side of the car.

  When I’d moved my arm, my blazer had gaped open, and he’d caught sight of the gun in my shoulder holster. My yelling and angry expression had apparently triggered fears of road rage. But before I could calm his alarm, he popped out of his car again, holding a semiautomatic handgun and pointing it in my direction.

  “Don’t move, lady, or I’ll blow you away.”

  From the slur in his voice, I could tell the driver had either been wasting away in Margaritaville early or had yet to sober up from the night before. Whichever the case, I was faced with an intoxicated idiot threatening me with a firearm.

  “Put the gun down,” I said in my most soothing voice and held my hands out at my sides in a nonintimidating posture, “or somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “Yeah, lady, and it’s going to be you.”

  “Be reasonable. Why would you shoot me?”r />
  “You’ve got a gun. You’re mad as hell and could blow me away for smashing your car.”

  His girlfriend was talking on her cell phone on the other side of the SUV. I hoped she was calling 911 and not ordering pizza.

  “If either of us uses deadly force,” I tried to explain, “we’ll be thrown in jail.”

  “Uh-huh.” The slightly inebriated driver shook his head. “Not in Florida. There’s a new law. If you threaten me, I can shoot you. No questions asked.”

  The kid was loosely interpreting the recent extension of the right to use deadly force, but the legalities at this point weren’t pertinent. What mattered was his shaky grasp of the facts, his finger on the trigger and how quickly I could defuse the situation.

  “I’m not threatening you,” I assured him, keeping my voice low.

  Although I’d like to wring his neck. My Volvo was old, but I’d bought it with money my father had left me, I’d spent a lot of hours both driving and on stakeout in that car, and it had great sentimental value.

  “My gun’s holstered,” I said. “I’m a private investigator, a former cop. This is a simple accident. We exchange insurance information and go our separate ways. Looks like you’re headed to the beach.”

  He kept the gun pointed in my general direction—he was too drunk to aim well—and he was either considering what I’d said or planning his best shot.

  An approaching siren sounded in the distance, and I hoped the Clearwater PD had a cruiser on the way. As much as I didn’t want to visit my mother, I’d rather not have a gunshot wound as an excuse to avoid her.

  The siren’s volume increased, and south of us, a police car turned the corner onto Fort Harrison and screeched to a stop behind the SUV.

  “Put the gun down, kid,” I warned, “before the cops shoot you.”

  “Do what she says, Richie,” the girl called from behind the car.

  Richie’s bravado wavered along with his aim. Before the cop could exit his vehicle, Richie turned and stashed the gun beneath the seat of his SUV.

  “Hey, Maggie,” a familiar voice called out. Rudy Beaton, a former Pelican Bay officer, had climbed out of the patrol car. He pushed back his cap and with a grin nodded toward the rear of my Volvo. “Looks like you got yourself a Signal Four here.”

  “And a Signal One,” I said to alert Rudy to the drunken state of the driver.

  Rudy surveyed the accident scene, then asked us to move our vehicles off busy Fort Harrison into an adjacent vacant parking lot. He parked his cruiser behind the SUV. Rudy’s backup arrived, and the two administered a field sobriety test to the young driver, who failed miserably. The girl tested clean.

  After the two cops had taken the pertinent information for the accident report, Rudy’s backup placed Richie in the back seat of his cruiser and left for the short drive to the station.

  Richie’s girlfriend had tested sober, but she was a bundle of nerves after the incident.

  “Can you drive?” Rudy asked her.

  “Sure.” She showed him her license, which she’d retrieved from her bag in the car.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he insisted.

  The girl nodded again.

  “You want to follow us to the station?” Rudy asked.

  Another nod.

  “Wish I could stay and catch up, Maggie,” Rudy said to me, “but with spring break, we’re busier than one-armed paperhangers.”

  “Be careful out there,” I said.

  “You, too.” Rudy headed for his cruiser. The girl, still shaken from the accident, slid behind the wheel of the SUV. She fastened her seat belt, put the car into gear and stomped the gas.

  The SUV lurched backward and smashed into the front of Rudy’s patrol car, crumpling the hood.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  I had waited while Rudy completed a second accident report, so it was afternoon when I reached the hospital.

  Mother was sitting in a chair next to the window, and Caroline perched on the edge of the bed. When I entered the room, she hopped up, looking so incredibly cheerful, the polar opposite of my mood, that I felt an uncontrollable urge to slap her. Somehow I managed to grit my teeth and resist.

  “Hi, Margaret. Mother, look who’s here.”

  Mother shifted her gaze from the window to me. Her mouth moved into a bizarre position, one side smiling, the other, still paralyzed from the stroke, frozen in a frown, her expression the perfect metaphor for the manner in which she’d treated me my entire life.

  My head was still pounding from the accident, my hives were screaming, my nerves were frayed, my stomach grumbled with hunger, and I realized too late I should never have confronted my mother in my present state of mind.

  “Hello, Mother. How are you feeling?”

  “Terrible.”

  The word came out slowly and garbled, but the look in her eyes left no question what she’d meant. I had to give the old girl credit, though. In spite of her incapacitation, she was dressed in a soft blue peignoir with her hair neatly combed and her makeup artfully applied. Caroline’s doing, I imagined.

  Frazzled by the accident, I probably looked more like the one who’d had a stroke. I should have at least stopped in the restroom to comb my hair, which my mother was eyeing with her usual disdain.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her, “that you’ve been through a rough time.”

  Caroline shifted to Mother’s side, sat on the arm of the chair and placed her arm around Mother’s shoulders. “Dr. Katz says she’s making remarkable progress. She’ll be going home in a day or so.”

  “That’s good news.” I forced myself to smile and wished that, in addition to my sympathy, I could muster some genuine warmth for the woman who’d borne me. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Mother shook her head. She was obviously embarrassed by her inability to speak clearly, a condition that left her at a distinct disadvantage, since her sharp tongue and caustic words, albeit disguised in a genteel tone, had always been her best weapons.

  As if to fill the void of silence, Caroline asked, “What have you been up to?”

  I shrugged. “Just working.”

  Mother had never found criminal investigations suitable for conversation, so I provided no details.

  Instead, I grabbed onto an appropriate social topic. “Bill and I plan to start house-hunting soon.”

  Caroline’s interest quickened. “There’s a house near us that just went on the market.”

  “Thanks. I’ll tell Bill.”

  But even if we could afford the prices in Belle Terre, such close proximity to both Mother and my sister was not a good idea. Neither had ever been touched by the crime and human suffering that had filled my life for so many years. Even without the added complication of Mother’s inferiority complex and her resulting animosity toward me, I’d never be able to bridge the gap between us. Our worlds were too different. Living close to each other would never change that.

  “I don’t want to tire you, Mother, so I’d better be going.” I approached her and kissed her papery cheek. I half expected her to jerk away, but she endured my feint at affection and made no attempt to reciprocate.

  After a quick goodbye to Caroline, I hurried from the room. I’d paid the obligatory visit, but it had left me feeling unsettled and frustrated—and angry with myself for expecting more.

  When I entered the office after a stop at Scallops for a turkey-stuffed croissant and iced tea with lime to go, Darcy, waving a white envelope, greeted me.

  “Gracie Lattimore was in earlier. She left this for you. Said you’d requested it. She had a cute little dog with her.”

  My sleep-deprived brain took a moment to process the information before I surmised that Gracie, at my suggestion, must have listed her demands to be met by Jolene before Gracie and Roger would return to the soap star’s condo.

  I carried the envelope and my takeout into my office and settled behind my desk.

  After scarfing half my sandwich, I
wiped my fingers on a paper napkin and slit open Gracie’s envelope. The list, written in a round, childish script, was short:

  Don’t call me shithead.

  Don’t make fun of how I look.

  Raise my salary.

  Give me an extra day off a month.

  Those four short sentences drew a pathetic picture of Gracie’s existence in Jolene’s employment and revealed as much about Gracie as the woman who’d hired her. Wishing Gracie had accepted the five thousand I’d offered and looked for another job, I dialed Jolene’s cell phone.

  When the soap star answered, I said, “This is Maggie Skerr—”

  “I was just about to call you.”

  “Has something happened?”

  Her throaty chuckle floated through the line. “Ah, yes. Something wonderful.” Then her tone changed. “You don’t have Roger, do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Thank God.”

  “I thought you wanted him back.” I was beginning to wonder if Jolene was operating on all cylinders.

  “I do, but not yet.”

  “Not yet?” What about poor little Roger’s broken heart?

  “I’m off to Cancún for a while. I’ve met the most marvelous man. He owns a condo here in my building. I ran into him at the pool, and what that man does to a Speedo—but that’s another story.”

  Already short on patience after a wrecked car and a visit with Mother, I asked, “What’s this got to do with Roger?”

  Jolene sighed, as if explaining to a mentally challenged child. “If I had Roger, I’d only have to board him until Ed and I get back from Mexico. While I’m away, the dog will be much happier with Gracie than in some strange kennel.”

  “But you still want the dog?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Gracie has some demands before she’ll give Roger back and return to work.”

  Jolene sighed again. “Gracie is always demanding. I’ll deal with her when I return.”

  “What if she’s found another job by then?” I knew Gracie wasn’t looking, but I was hoping by implying otherwise to provide her some leverage with Jolene.