The arm came loose.
Slade shot to the surface, gasping in shock and horror. Disbelief. He’d dropped the . . . thing, thank God. Get a grip, Whitlaw. That wasn’t Jody. Jody’s still down there. A swift glance showed that Matt had maneuvered the capsized canoe into a makeshift alligator barricade. Josh Tyree was searching the water on the other side of the huge oak’s tangled root system.
Ruthlessly, Slade shut out the awful thing he had discovered. A few gulps of air and he plunged back into the massive snarl of roots below.
Jody was there. Together, Slade and Josh pried the clinging roots apart and got her out. Since all three surfers were trained in CPR, Jody was soon coughing up great spurts of brown water. It was Slade who called 911, Slade who hovered as Jody was transferred to the ambulance. Slade who called the police and then went back to the river, diving once again into the murky depths.
The single bravest act of his young life.
“I threw up all over him!” Jody wailed to Claire early Monday morning. “Slade Whitlaw, and I spit the Calusa ri–right down his trunks.” Jody hung her head, hot tears threatening to spill onto the papers on her desk.
Claire rolled her chair next to Jody’s and gave her a hug. “I’m sure he was nothing but relieved, Jody. Take my word for it.” The only reply was a shuddering sob. “Are you sure you ought to be here?” Claire asked anxiously. “It seems to me you should take it easy for another day or so.”
A gulp, a small sniff, and then a firm No. “Believe me,” Jody said, “it’s much better to be too busy to think.” She squared her shoulders, blew her nose, and reached for her message pad. Her fingers slowed, pausing just short of their goal. “He came to see me. Slade. At the hospital,” she whispered. “He was so nice . . . never said a word about . . . about the other thing.”
Claire, too, had not said a word about Slade’s grisly discovery, rather hoping that Jody didn’t know. “So you’ve heard,” she said gently.
“Dad told me last night. Said if I was determined to go back to work, I’d better hear it from him first.” Jody shook her head. “Poor Slade. He really had a bad day.”
“And you didn’t, of course,” Claire murmured.
“Do they . . . have they found out who it was?”
“They think so.” Claire bit her lip, wondering just how frank she should be. Task Force members had had a weekend only slightly less nasty than Jody’s and Slade’s. Even Brad had been shaken by the grisly task of identifying the arm Slade found in the Calusa. The search for more body parts included killing the gator and examining the contents of its stomach.
“Her name was Jeannette Tyler,” Claire said. Newly wed. Pregnant. Her wedding rings still on the hand at the end of her disembodied arm. “Her husband reported her missing when he got back from a trip to Tampa Saturday night. She was sitting the models at that new development south of town, the one where the land is all stripped and there are three models just sitting out in the middle of nothing except a man-made lake.”
Jody nodded. “Myrtle Lakes. Old Gus Johnson’s place. He had a stroke about a year ago. Sent all his kids to college and no one wanted to ranch any more. Why should they, when they can live like kings without lifting a finger?” she added somewhat bitterly.
“That’s the one,” Claire confirmed. “It seems she disappeared sometime Friday, and since the models were all open, no one complained when they didn’t see a sales agent on Saturday. Guess they just thought she was busy with a customer somewhere else.”
“They think it’s the same guy, don’t they? The nut case . . . the serial killer?”
“No one seems to think the husband did it—he was conducting a real estate seminar in Tampa from Friday night through five on Saturday. So, the nut case is a definite possibility. Though why he dumped her body in the river no one knows.”
“And the gator got her.”
“It seems likely,” Claire murmured uncomfortably.
“I missed it, you know,” Jody said. “Dad said the gator came right up to the canoe, that the boys were all heroes. He also says the boys deserve a trip to the woodshed, but he’s going to treat them to steaks at Outback instead.”
“To tell you the truth,” Claire admitted, squeezing Jody’s hand, “the thought of Jamie growing up positively terrifies me.”
That brought a grin and a knowing look to Jody’s pale face. “Then maybe you’d better get busy on providing him with some brothers and sisters so you won’t have just him to worry about. I think that’s why my parents are so cool. They just don’t have time to worry about all the mischief five of us can get up to.”
Jody and Claire went back to work with lighter hearts. Life was easier when you shared the misery.
Until Claire remembered. Jeannette Tyler was salesperson for one of Golden Beach’s newest developments. The same position Claire would have at Amber Run.
Every year in mid-summer, T & T sent out invoices to its seasonal renters, notifying them of the balance due on their reservation deposits. Since nearly all of T & T’s two hundred seasonal rentals were already booked for the following winter, Claire found the task of checking the database’s initial deposit figures against the daily bookkeeper’s records particularly tedious.
She sighed, leaned back, and took a moment to clear her head. Swiveling her chair toward the broad expanse of the reception area, she stared beyond Jody to the odd sight of Maggie McKinnon in close conversation with Ken Millard. Shy, inarticulate Ken who had evidently strayed from his normally unbending routine of walk-in, speak-a-shy-greeting, pick-up-the-accounting-printouts-and-leave. He was standing close to Maggie, his thin, surprisingly attractive face bent down to hear what she was saying. Maggie’s smile was radiant, trusting. Naïve.
Claire shivered.
Ridiculous. Ken Millard was as innocuous as a lamb. Fussy, a bit obsessive, but a handsome figure of a man. And Maggie could certainly use a bit of attention. And yet . . .
“But, Claire, he asked me to The Pelican!” Maggie wailed a short while later when Claire cornered her in the backroom. “I’ve been here six months and I’ve never eaten there,”
“I’m not suggesting you break the date,” Claire sighed. “I’m only saying, be careful. This isn’t the best time to be starting a new relationship.”
“But Ken’s worked for Phil forever,” Maggie protested.
On the verge of saying Ken Millard gave her the creeps, Claire bit her tongue. Surely the killer couldn’t be anyone so obviously quirky. And certainly not someone they knew. Not a member of T & T’s real estate family. Not a friend. “I’m sorry, Maggie,” Claire apologized, “Just . . . just don’t be too trusting until you know him better, okay?”
“Gotcha.” Maggie grinned. “Frankly, the few—the very few—dates I’ve had since moving down here have been real duds. This’ll probably be a one-timer too.” Maggie’s flippancy faded. “But thanks for caring, I appreciate it.”
Claire murmured an appropriate response, then dragged her feet back to her computer. For a long time she simply stared at the screen, not seeing the rows of figures on the database. Her vision was filled with Ken Millard towering over diminutive Maggie McKinnon, his height, his masculinity overshadowing her, overpowering her . . .
Claire shuddered, blinked. The screen came back in focus. Her imagination was on hyperdrive, her job stuck on idle. Grimly, she settled down to merging and printing two hundred invoices.
Virginia Bentley was lying in wait for her granddaughter when Claire came through the door. Ginny stopped scraping carrots and exiled Jamie to the swing that hung from a giant live oak in the yard below.
“You can’t sit model homes out back of beyond,” Ginny stated without preamble, wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s out of the question.”
“Brad has his life savings tied up in that development. I have to sit the models.”
“Brad will just have to find a man for the job.”
“No.” Claire had inherited Ginny’s stubbornness.
Wordlessly, Claire bent down to retrieve a bottle of gin from under the counter and proceeded to fix them both a gin and tonic, Ginny Bentley’s favorite drink for a hot summer afternoon. “Let’s sit down a minute,” Claire suggested, leading the way into the greatroom.
“Brad and I have discussed it at length,” she admitted when they had each settled into their favorite chairs. “I’ll only work the models while Brad and the construction workers are on site. I’ll never be alone. Until the first model is finished I’ll be in a small construction trailer, right in front of the model the crews are working on. It’s going to have a phone, a computer and a fax machine. When the crew is through, I’m through. That’s usually around four o’clock. We won’t catch the after-work crowd, but that can’t be helped. We’ll get them on the weekends instead.”
“You can’t work seven days a week,” Ginny protested, eagerly seizing upon this additional objection.
“We’re going to be open Wednesday through Sunday until we can afford to hire extra help. Jamie can be with us on weekends, and after school. We want you to have some peace and quiet again.” Dear lord, Claire thought, she was spouting all the arguments Brad had used on her.
“I’ll have plenty of peace and quiet if you’re both dead,” Ginny snapped. As the silence lengthened, she sighed. “So you’re going to marry him, are you?”
“It begins to look that way,” Claire murmured. “Brad’s rather like a bulldozer, he just rolls right over objections, doubts—”
“You have doubts?” Ginny asked sharply.
Claire took a long sip of her drink, stared out over the sparkling blue of the bay. “Only about myself,” she admitted softly. “I never thought to stay here. Everything is so different, so . . . foreign. There are the tourists, the retirees, and then there’s the real Florida. The people who work here, the ones who know what it’s really like. I’ve caught a glimpse of that world, and I’m not sure I can live with it, that I’ll ever fit in.”
“Are you being a snob, child?”
“Possibly.”
“I thought you loved him.”
Claire chuckled. “There speaks the romance novelist.”
“Well, don’t you?”
“I adore him. I’m mad about him. And, yes, I can’t live without him. So I’m stuck, right?”
“Your romanticism overwhelms me.” Sarcasm dripped from the woman who had made a fortune writing about a myriad loves of a lifetime.
Claire procrastinated. “Just give me a little more time to lick my wounds. If I take on Brad Blue, it’s for life, and I want to be sure I know what I’m doing. That’s another reason I have to sit his models. I’ll be working with him every day, and I’ll be working out there in his jungle, which fascinates me but also scares me. I need to find out if I can take it. If I can live with a Florida cracker. Does that make sense?”
Ginny Bentley hauled herself up out of her favorite chair and gave her granddaughter a hug. “Yes, it does, but that doesn’t keep me from being terrified.”
After Ginny returned to the kitchen, Claire stood at one of the windows and looked down on Jamie happily swinging below, one grubby sneaker deliberately plowing a furrow into the sandy soil. What was right for Jamie? For herself?
Did they really have a choice?
She lusted after Brad Blue. The alternative was endless loneliness, for no other man could ever measure up. Jamie needed a father. Ginny needed a rest. There was the exciting challenge of working with Brad to build a Florida-friendly community, a satisfying task that truly appealed to her. The northern invasion could not be stopped. It was far better for the new Floridians to live with their environment than pave it over and turn it into just another bit of suburban blight only partially concealed by a few strategically placed palms and hibiscus bushes.
And yet . . .
There were alligators, snakes, spiders, attack ants whose bites raised blisters and had been known to kill. Vultures munched on the daily road kill of raccoons, possums and armadillos. The sinister black birds were so accustomed to the advance of so-called civilization they didn’t even lift their heads as cars whizzed by.
And now it was possible some two-legged critter might want to kill her.
Would she ever be free? Of bitterness, anguished memories, terror, guilt? Was there any hope at all?
Chapter Seventeen
“Am I crazy?” Claire demanded later that evening as she and Brad sat on a sofa in the cozy elegance of Palm Court’s living room. “The day Ken and I had lunch at the jetties he was so fussy, so precise, so weird, my hair stood on end.”
Brad raised one shaggy blond brow. “Would you prefer that your accountant not be precise?” he inquired mildly.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you know what I mean!”
“I may be relieved to hear he doesn’t turn you on, but that doesn’t make him a murderer.” When Claire’s only response was an inelegant snort, Brad caught her chin between his fingers, tilting it up to meet his quizzical smile. “Believe me, my love, I’ve known Ken Millard since he was a myopic six-year-old. He’s about as harmless as they come.
My love. Was she really? Claire wondered. The words came so easily, she could hear the phrase echoing from his lips through years of other women, other loves. Hope whispered he meant it, however lightly the words slipped out, but her heart had doubts. Like some old pendulum clock, she swung first one way, then the other. Tick. Tock.
Strong. Weak.
Brave. Fearful.
Embrace love. Run like hell.
Brad’s callused fingers still lingered on Claire’s chin. “Okay,” he said lightly, “we won’t dismiss old Ken, or any of my off-the-wall hunches either.” He removed his hand and leaned back into the cocoon of the soft brocaded upholstery. “As long as we’re tossing pies in the sky, do you have any other suspects in mind?”
“There’s no need to be patronizing.”
“Patronizing? Me?” Brad exploded. “You’re female. You’re in the real estate business. If you weren’t smart enough to realize the killer could be someone you know, you never would have thought of Ken. So take a minute and see if you can think of anyone else who might be harboring a sick soul.”
As much as Claire resented Brad’s dismissing her doubts about Ken Millard, he had a point. If not Ken, then the killer was likely someone closely associate with the real estate community. But of course she had to play devil’s advocate. “Maybe he just finds Realtors an easy mark.”
“Maybe. But do me a favor. Expand your horizons beyond Ken.”
“Okay,” Claire sighed. “There was an odd incident about a month ago. I helped Maggie McKinnon do a market evaluation on a mobile home. We’d just gotten the first warning about using the buddy system, so Jake Spanos went with Maggie on the listing appointment. When they got there, the owner was all biceps and beard, slumped down in this big old chair, with a shotgun lying on the floor right by his fingertips. I know that doesn’t mean much, but surely he’s worth checking out.”
“No law against having a shotgun in your home,” Brad pointed out, reasonably enough. “The circumstances were spooky but scarcely illegal. You have a name on this character?”
“It’s still on my computer. I’ll call you in the morning.” And may Phil Tierney never find out who made trouble for a potential client.
“I’ll have the police run him through their files, see if he has a record,” Brad said, “but I have a feeling our killer comes in a smoother package. Someone charming enough, and good looking enough, to keep women from exercising their usual caution.”
“You’re probably right,” Claire sighed. “From what Maggie says, the shotgun guy was a real mess. Guaranteed to scare almost anyone half to death.”
Brad’s bare heels dug into the thick beige carpet as he stretched his long
legs. “So what we’ve got,” he declared, “is jackshit. Four dead Realtors and an unidentified elderly female skeleton in Pine Grove and not a decent clue among ’em.”
“You think the skeleton that dog found was part of all this?”
“I don’t know. The sheriff thinks I’m nuts, but for some gut reason I think there could be a connection between the bones in the Grove and the Realtor murders.”
“Vicky DelVecchio said it was probably a case where some retiree’s wife died and he buried her himself so he could enjoy both their Social Security checks.”
“Trust Vicky to take the cynic’s view. Her theory’s probably better than mine, but somehow bells keep going off. My hunch is so strong I can taste it.”
“Like I have about Ken Millard,” Claire murmured provocatively.
Brad’s lips curled in derision. “Poor old Ken. He can’t help it if he sees the world and everyone in it as a neat set of figures.”
“He certainly noticed Maggie McKinnon’s figure,” Claire retorted. “He’s asked her out to supper. At The Pelican.”
“Good for him,” Brad chuckled. “There’s life in the poor boy after all.”
He could laugh about Ken Millard all he wanted, Claire thought, but she wasn’t about to write the accountant off as a suspect. “So what are you going to do?” she challenged. “What about all this high-tech forensic stuff? DNA and semen matches, things like that?”
“Matches with what? Do you expect us to hold clinics where we line up all the men in two counties and test them?”
“Sorry.”
“Apologies are mine,” said Brad, making a show of raising her hand to his lips and casually fitting his reply between kissing her fingers one by one. “My frustration is showing. Yes, my dear Ms. Langdon, we’re getting a more than ample collection of forensic evidence. If we ever come up with a suspect for crossmatch, we should have him cold.”
Never mind that she felt those kisses in regions far removed from her fingers. Stick to the subject, Langdon. The life you save may be your own. “Have you been down to Pine Grove yet?” she asked, struggling to match Brad’s nonchalant tone.
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