Spring Break

by Charlotte Douglas

  “Not me,” I insisted.

  “Yeah, I know.” He pointed to my face. “You’re allergic, not phobic.”

  I popped another Benadryl. “This allergy started with the child murders. If we can solve them, maybe my hives will go away for good.”

  “You still think Branigan’s a suspect?” Bill had circled the block and headed south toward Harbor Oaks.

  “It’s a long shot. Doc’s DNA comparisons will tell us more.”

  “According to the files,” Bill said, “Mackley had the killer’s DNA sample run through every available data bank just last year and came up empty. Whoever our guy is, he’s not a registered sex offender.”

  Frustration made my skin itch. I’d been trying to connect the cold cases with the Fisk and Branigan murders without success. And, unless we had a break in one of the homicides soon, they’d all be cold.

  The street in front of the Branigan house was clogged with parked cars by the time we arrived. Bill had to leave his SUV three blocks away, and I was glad for the cooling sea breeze as we walked to the reception. The trek in pumps with two-inch heels that matched my navy dress and jacket, formerly reserved for court appearances, killed my feet. I hoped my nondescript attire, an unassuming outfit that made Caroline shudder at its plainness, would help me blend into the crowd of guests streaming into the Branigan home.

  Madison frowned at us when we entered the house but made no effort to stop us, probably because he didn’t want to cause a scene in front of so many important guests. We passed through the entry hall to the rear terrace, where an elaborate buffet had been set up by the caterers. Round dining tables, covered with ivory-colored linens and centered with massive arrangements of cream-colored roses and orchids, had been scattered across the rolling lawn and around the pool. Some guests had already filled their plates and taken seats. Others chatted in small groups but kept their conversations muted.

  “We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” Bill said.

  I nodded. “When this is over, I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Bill moved away into the crowd, and I couldn’t help noting that, in his well-cut suit, he looked as distinguished as any of the movers and shakers.

  I went through the buffet line and placed a couple of finger sandwiches on my plate while I eavesdropped on the people nearby.

  “Carlton’s death was so horrible,” one elegantly dressed woman was saying to her companion. “It’s one thing to die peacefully in your sleep, but murdered in your own backyard?”

  “Too much crime in today’s world,” her dapper escort complained. “I’ll bet you when they catch whoever did it, he’s an illegal alien.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  He looked astounded. “Don’t you watch Fox News? Murders by illegal aliens are happening all over the country. And they’ll continue until we clamp down on the borders.”

  Plate in hand, I moved away. After finding a wrought-iron bench beneath a ligustrum tree, I sat, rested my aching feet and surveyed the crowd. Stella, looking pale but stoic, moved among her guests, shaking hands, having her cheek kissed and accepting condolences. Angela and Sidney had taken seats at a table by the pool, where Sidney glared into his drink. Occasionally someone would stop, place a hand on Sidney’s shoulder, and speak briefly, but the son’s prickly attitude discouraged further conversation.

  People avoided the arbor where Carlton had died. Someone, perhaps Madison or the caterers, had placed two massive palms in jardinieres and a bamboo screen in front of the entrance, either to discourage the curious or to spare Stella from having to look at her husband’s murder scene all afternoon.

  Anyone who used the buffet table had to walk past my bench to reach the lawn, and, although I kept my eyes and ears open, I neither saw nor heard anything helpful to the investigation of Carlton’s murder. I caught sight of Bill at the far end of the pool, still working the crowd, and I decided to slip next door.

  No one seemed to notice as I sauntered toward the break in the hedge and took the path that led into Sidney’s property. On the other side of his garage, a delicate-looking child with long blond hair and blue eyes and dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers, was sitting in a swing beneath a live oak. She looked startled when she spotted me.

  “It’s okay, Brianna,” I said. “I work for your grandmother.”

  She braced her feet against the ground to stop the swing and looked ready to bolt for the house. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

  “That’s a good rule,” I said. “Why don’t you go find Ingrid? She knows me. We’ll see if Ingrid says it’s okay for us to talk.”

  I backed away to give her space, and she raced toward the back door. She reappeared a moment later with Ingrid in tow.

  “Ms. Skerritt,” Ingrid said with obvious relief when she recognized me. “Brianna said there was a stranger in the yard.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” I said. “I’m escaping from the crush next door. I could barely breathe in that crowd.”

  Ingrid nodded. The buzz of hundreds of voices carried over the hedge.

  “Is it okay if I stay here a moment and catch my breath?”

  She looked hesitant. “I suppose it’s all right. I have packing to finish.”

  “You’re taking a trip?”

  “Not me. The Branigans. They’re leaving for the Caribbean Monday morning.”

  “Don’t let me take you from your work,” I said. “Maybe Brianna will keep me company.”

  Brianna, in a burst of shyness, grabbed the housekeeper’s hand.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Ingrid said. “Ms. Skerritt is a nice lady, and she used to be a policewoman.”

  “Really?” Brianna seemed impressed and released Ingrid to study me closer.

  “Really.” I nodded to Ingrid, and she turned to head back inside.

  “Did you ever shoot anybody?” Brianna asked.

  Memories of my first months on the job, when I’d been Malcolm’s partner, flashed through my mind. We’d answered a domestic-abuse call. The battered and terrified wife had grabbed Bill, and her coke-crazed husband had attacked him with a machete. I’d fired three rounds into the husband’s chest, killing him almost instantly. My quick action had earned Bill’s gratitude and respect and erased his objections to having a woman partner. The rest, as they say, is history.

  But I sidestepped Brianna’s question about shootings, figuring she’d had enough violence in her young life the past few days. “Cops don’t like to use their guns. We prefer to settle things peacefully.”

  “Oh.” She returned to her swing, and I moved to a lawn chair within conversation range.

  “What else do cops do?” Brianna asked.

  She’d given me the opening I’d hoped for. “They arrest bad people. Do you know any bad people?”

  She didn’t answer and stared at her feet, then pushed off until her swing formed a high arc.

  I watched her swing for a few minutes. When she slowed down, I said, “I’m sorry about your grandfather.”

  I didn’t know how much her parents had told her, but I was fairly certain the child knew that Carlton was dead.

  She planted her feet, stopped the swing and cocked her head. “He won’t ever be coming back?”

  Her voice and expression were devoid of emotion, and I didn’t try to answer her with tales of heaven and the Great Beyond. If Carlton had done what I suspected, he was roasting on a spit in hell. “No, he won’t be coming back.”

  She nodded, but her features remained expressionless and gave no clue to her feelings about her grandfather. She glanced past me toward her grandparents’ house, and her face brightened.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  I turned and saw Sidney approaching. His face was florid with anger and possibly too much drink.

  Before he could speak, I held up my hands. “I was just leaving.”

  “Not fast enough,” he said with a snarl.

  I wiggled my fingers at the little girl. �
��Bye, Brianna. Enjoy your vacation.”

  I hurried past Sidney and through the gap in the hedge, then plunged into the crowd still gathered next door. Within minutes, I found Bill by the buffet table, chatting with Edward Raleigh, the state senator from Pelican Bay, and his wife.

  Several dozen inane conversations later, I waited out front for Bill to pick me up. After observing my limp from the high heels I was unaccustomed to wearing, he offered to go after the car and spare me the three-block hike. God, I loved that man.

  CHAPTER 16

  Bill dropped me off at my condo, and I changed clothes as well as shoes. For my interview with Georgia Harding, I scrubbed off my minimal makeup and donned sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt that read Grow Your Own Dope—Plant a Man. Darcy had given it to me as a joke several Christmases ago, and I was hoping the message would strike a chord with the self-proclaimed feminist and make her more willing to talk.

  I climbed into my Volvo, battered but still functional after its rear-end collision, and drove south through Clearwater. Belleair was nestled between Clearwater and Largo, and the section along the waterfront was home to millionaires and movie stars, including wrestler Hulk Hogan. On the other side of what used to be the tracks but was now the Pinellas Trail, a linear park that bisected the county, were more modest houses. That’s where I found Georgia Harding’s cement-block cottage. From the overgrown state of her yard and the disrepair of her house, Georgia needed to find herself a good man, or, at least, to hire one who knew how to use a lawn mower, power tools and a paintbrush.

  I knocked on a jalousie pane of the front door. Georgia must have heard my car and been watching, because the door opened immediately. I was expecting a radical feminist, and I wasn’t disappointed. Sans makeup, Georgia wore men’s slacks, a loose-fitting tie-dyed shirt that didn’t quite hide the absence of a bra, and an attitude. She looked about as approachable as a porcupine. John Lennon glasses perched on her prominent nose, and her long frizzy hair exploded around her face like a brown nimbus streaked with gray. According to the data Adler had pulled from her driver’s license, she was sixty-two. Her frown softened only slightly when she read the slogan on my shirt.

  I introduced myself and gave her my card. “I’m here to talk about Carlton Branigan.”

  “That jerk? He’s dead.” And she wasn’t exactly broken up about it.

  “Unfortunately,” I said, “not from natural causes.”

  She appeared ready to slam the door in my face, so I continued quickly. “Here’s the deal. You can either answer my questions now or talk to the cops later when they haul you into the station. Your call.”

  With a sigh of resignation, she stood aside. I stepped into what in most homes would have been a living room, but hers was command central. Instead of framed art, the walls sported posters of everything from Greenpeace, NOW and Tampa Bay Gay and Lesbian Pride to a picture of Karl Marx. In the middle of the room was a desk topped with a computer, fax machine and printer and surrounded by eight-foot tables piled high with bundles of leaflets and flyers. Cardboard posters, lettered with typical antiestablishment slogans, and, surprisingly, a few that read Save The Belleview Biltmore, a historic Belleair resort, were propped in the room’s corners. Except for a few paper clips, rubber bands and a litter of dust bunnies, the terrazo floor was bare.

  Georgia removed a stack of folders from a metal chair and offered me a seat. Even in sneakers, my feet still hurt, so I took it.

  She sat behind her desk and peered at me with a hostile expression over the frames of her glasses. “So you’re a private eye?”

  I nodded. “Mrs. Branigan hired me to investigate her husband’s murder.”

  Her lip curled in a sneer. “I thought that was the pigs’ job.”

  I couldn’t ignore the insult. “I was a cop myself for more than twenty years.”

  Picturing a much younger Georgia during the Vietnam era, carrying a sign that read Hell, No, We Won’t Go! or Make Love, Not War, and being hauled away from a demonstration by baton-wielding uniforms in riot gear, I added, “Cops aren’t always the bad guys.”

  “Fascist pigs,” Georgia muttered with a grunt of disgust. The woman was obviously enraged at a world she couldn’t control. “Male Oppressors.”

  “Hold that thought,” I said. “Maybe it will keep you from dialing 911 if someone tries to break into your house. Or steals your car. Or an antifeminist whacko with a gun and half a brain is stalking you.”

  Two unsolved homicides and the annoying spat between Jolene and Gracie had my nerves inflamed and my temper on a short fuse. I refused to sit quietly while Georgia denigrated my life’s work and the men and women who put their lives on the line every day.

  Georgia leaned back in her chair and glared at me for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she relaxed, and her face broke into a broad smile that made her almost pretty. “I like you. I bet you don’t take crap off anyone.”

  “I had a special course at the police academy,” I said. “Crap Deflection 101.”

  And my take-no-nonsense attitude usually worked, with almost everyone except my mother. I realized with a sinking feeling that I hadn’t checked on her today. Caroline would have called if Mother had taken a turn for the worse, so it wasn’t Mother’s health I worried about but the fallout from neglecting her.

  And Georgia thought cops were oppressors. She’d never met Priscilla Skerritt.

  “So why are you—and the police—interested in me?” Georgia’s disdain had lessened, and she seemed less on guard.

  “Your hate mail to Senator Branigan is on file at his office.”

  “Hate mail?” Georgia snorted. “I only wrote the truth. Are you aware of that man’s abysmal voting record?”

  “No.” But I was sure she was going to tell me.

  “He’s anti-everything. Women’s rights, gay marriage, abortion, preserving the environment. You name it, he’s against it. If he had his way, women would still be without the vote and eternally barefoot and pregnant.” Hatred contorted her features, and her strong, lean fingers clenched in anger.

  “You sound passionate,” I said. “It took someone with a lot of passion and a ton of rage to strangle Branigan to death.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t kill him, but I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

  “Where were you Wednesday morning?”

  “Picketing outside MacDill Airbase in Tampa. The vice president was visiting CentCom. A few of my friends and I gave him a welcoming party.”

  “Can anyone verify that?”

  “Yeah, Channel 8. Their crews took miles of film footage. We made the noon and evening news and the metro section of Thursday’s Tribune. In fact—” she swung her desk chair toward her computer and hit a few keys, then swiveled her laptop so I could see the display screen “—I’m there, on the right.”

  She had accessed the Tribune’s archives, and her face stared back at me from the photo of a group of protestors taken Wednesday morning, according to the caption.

  Her alibi eliminated her as Branigan’s killer but upped my frustration level. The feminist had been our last named suspect. Now the Clearwater cops and Bill and I were operating in the dark in our search for the murderer. We had no further suspects, no motives, and too many days since the murder. The trail was getting colder by the minute.

  “That’s all I needed to know.” I pushed to my feet. “Thanks for your time.”

  Georgia walked me to the door and, as I was leaving, nodded toward the wording on my shirt. “Are you a feminist?”

  I thought of the lawsuit I’d filed and won fifteen years ago, when Chief Shelton had refused to hire me for the Pelican Bay Police Department because I was female. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  Georgia grinned, and I added quickly, “But I’m not giving up my bra.”

  Gracie Lattimore’s uncle’s house was only a few miles south of Georgia Harding’s, so I decided to pay Gracie a call while I was near the neighborhood. In less than ten minutes after leaving Georgia, I was parkin
g in front of the Largo bungalow.

  The sun was setting as I went up the front walk, and cooking odors assaulted me when Gracie opened the front door.

  So did Roger. His enthusiastic coupling with my leg left no doubt that he was delighted to see me.

  Gracie grabbed him by the collar and reined him in. “Bad boy, Roger. It’s a good thing Jolene had you fixed, or no telling how you’d behave.”

  Roger, however, appeared unrepentant. He strained at his collar and grinned at me, his tail wagging so hard his entire hind end gyrated.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” I said to Gracie.

  “I’m finished. Except for the cleaning up. Have you talked to Jolene?”

  I nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

  To my surprise, Gracie appeared disappointed. “Have a seat, please, and tell me what she said.”

  The Lattimores’ living room was tiny and thread-bare, the furniture topped with crocheted doilies and knickknacks, and every surface so clean it sparkled. I sat on a sofa and Gracie settled into an oversize recliner. Roger hopped onto the sofa beside me, turned around three times and stretched out against my thigh with a happy grunt.

  Except for the ticking of a clock on the fireplace mantel and Roger’s snuffles, the house was quiet.

  “Are your aunt and uncle home?” I asked.

  “Uncle Slim and Aunt Ruth are traveling with Uncle Frank. Roger and I have the whole house to ourselves. It’s great, isn’t it, Rog?”

  Roger, who was now asleep, didn’t answer.

  I told Gracie about Jolene’s phone call and her whirlwind trip to Cancún. “So I won’t be able to give her your demands until she returns.”

  “Good,” Gracie said with a satisfied nod.

  “Good? Don’t you need your job back?” With both Gracie and her boss, I could never figure out what they really wanted.

  “I’ll get my job back.” Gracie folded her hands in her lap and smiled.

  I didn’t share her optimism. “I’ll present your demands to Jolene when she returns, but I can’t guarantee she’ll agree to them.”