Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  “Autopsy?”

  “I’ll call you when it’s set tomorrow.”

  After Doris left, I combed the house for clues to why and how Edith Wainwright had died. The obese young woman apparently lived with only her cat for company. No signs of any social life, nothing but a bookcase of tattered paperback romances and a well-thumbed TV Guide. No signs of other occupants or visitors. The situation supported probable suicide.

  I turned to the two technicians with the sheriff’s crime-scene unit I’d asked Adler to call in. “I want a sweep of the entire house, especially the living room. Fibers, prints, the works.”

  “Gonna get a lot of cat hair,” the younger member of the team mumbled.

  While the older technician snapped photos of the hall and living area, I inspected the kitchen. Except for the cat hair, Edith Wainwright had been a meticulous housekeeper. Not a speck of dust or spot of grime in sight.

  Magnets on the gleaming refrigerator door displayed pithy comments: “A world without men—no crime and lots of fat, happy women.” Another proclaimed, “I can stand any frustration as long as the cookies hold out,” and a third, “God must have loved calories because he made so many of them.”

  A woman after my own heart.

  Adler ambled into the kitchen with a small lavender book. “Found this in the bureau in her bedroom.”

  I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and grasped the diary between thumb and forefinger. Poor kid. She’d obviously been a very private person. Her death had destroyed not only her life but her privacy as well. By the time my investigation was complete, I’d know Edith Wainwright’s every secret. Feeling like a voyeur, I placed the diary on the kitchen table and turned the pages.

  The book documented Edith’s despair over her weight problem and her desire for a boyfriend, one Jeff Hadley in particular. But the rest of the entries didn’t fit with suicide. The latest were upbeat, almost joyful, a pound-by-pound account of her weight loss.

  And if her death had been suicide, where had the cyanide come from? Adler and I searched the house, the car and carport, the utility shed and the dark yard, but located no sign of the poison or a container. What I did turn up shot the suicide theory full of holes.

  The base of a blender sat on the kitchen counter, and I found the blender itself in the refrigerator, filled with a liquid that looked like weak Pepto-Bismol. On the counter beside the blender stood a tall glass, an empty envelope of diet drink powder and three bottles of vitamin supplements.

  I reconstructed the victim’s last minutes. Edith comes home from work, mixes herself a diet shake, pours it in the glass. But the glass was unused, absolutely clean. Had she tasted the supplement from the blender and died? Or taken the vitamins?

  I bagged the blender and the items on the counter and handed them to the CSU techs. “I need these analyzed ASAP, in case product-tampering’s involved.”

  Six hours after first arriving at Edith Wainwright’s, I eased my way through the door of my town house, mindful of sleeping neighbors. With nerves as raw as ground meat and my brain wired from too much coffee and adrenaline, sleep wouldn’t come easy.

  I climbed the stairs to the second-floor bedroom, peeled off my navy blazer and tossed it onto the quilted bedspread. I removed my blue Smith & Wesson .357 from its holster, placed it on the bedside table and set the alarm for 6:00 a.m., just a few hours away.

  After hanging my canvas shoulder holster on a hook inside the closet door, I tugged off my khaki skirt and plaid blouse and kicked off my loafers. I was stuck in a time warp. Almost thirty years out of college, and I still dressed like a preppy coed.

  At least I was consistent. The oversize PBPD T-shirt I chose to sleep in wouldn’t be out of place in any college dorm. After grabbing a blanket from the foot of my bed, I opened the sliding glass doors to the balcony, wrapped the blanket around me and settled on the cushions of the lounge chair.

  When my father died, I’d used the money from my inheritance to buy a small condo on the waterfront. Its living room opened onto a small lawn with a seawall that held back the waters of St. Joseph Sound. I figured my investment had saved me thousands in psychiatry bills. When the stress of my job mounted, I’d sit on the seawall or the bedroom balcony and watch waves lap against the shore. The lulling, white noise of wind and water almost always scoured away the tensions and frustrations of work.

  Tonight, I counted on the soothing surf and sea breeze to ease my racing mind so I could sleep, but I didn’t hold out much hope. My brain revved with the latest statistics. A serious crime was committed in Florida every three minutes. What bugged me most were the criminals themselves. Maybe one out of four was driven to violence by extenuating circumstances—fear, rage, hunger, drunkenness, stupidity—and, as a result, suffered true remorse over his deed. The other three-quarters terrified me with their coldness. Psychopaths, or sociopaths, depending on whether you subscribed to the nature or nurture theory, none possessed the milk of human kindness. Never accepting responsibility for their crimes, they lacked the capacity for rehabilitation. A few years in lockup under Florida’s revolving-door prison system would send them out onto the streets again, meaner, smarter, more deadly than before.

  Had Edith Wainwright committed suicide or had she been murdered by a cold-blooded psychopath? Her diary revealed no one who might have snuffed her in the throes of hot-blooded passion. And if her death was a random murder, I had a sicko loose who apparently killed for the thrill of it.

  My instincts told me I was dealing with murder, the first in more than five years in Pelican Bay. I took a dim view of some crazy out there killing the people I was sworn to protect and serve.

  The daughter of a doctor, I could handle natural deaths. With so many elderly living alone in our town, the department was often called by neighbors or letter carriers to check on people who hadn’t been seen or heard from, who didn’t answer their doors or phones. The victims had usually succumbed to strokes or heart attacks.

  But Edith Wainwright was different. Young and getting her life on track, she shouldn’t have died. The more I’d studied the scene and evidence, the more convinced I’d become that Edith’s death was murder. Just a few crucial details were missing, like motive, opportunity and suspects.

  North along the shoreline from my balcony, the lights of the marina twinkled in the morning darkness. I tried to pick out Bill Malcolm’s cabin cruiser from among the distant masts and flying bridges. I considered calling Bill to discuss the case. An incurable insomniac, he was probably still awake. Bill functioned better on two hours of sleep than most people did on eight.

  Too wired to sleep, I tugged the blanket closer to ward off the October breeze blowing off the sound, and thought about Bill Malcolm.

  CHAPTER 2

  When I first met Bill Malcolm twenty-two years ago, he had been a twelve-year veteran of the Tampa Police Department. His thick brown hair, blue eyes sparkling with humor, and the spate of freckles across his nose gave him the angelic look of a choirboy.

  A few years later, advancing age and the stress of the job had erased the boyish appearance and sharpened his face into a maturity no less beneficent. In any bad cop/good cop scenario, Bill was always the good guy. His kindly face belied the shrewd mind beneath it and made him an interrogator to whom people opened their hearts as to a priest in a confessional, all because of the deceptive innocence in his crooked smile and artless blue eyes.

  I had viewed his kindly appearance with relief when first assigned as his partner. But when we hit the streets in the College Hill district for our first patrol, Bill set the record straight.

  “Look, Margaret—”

  Outside my immediate family, only Bill called me Margaret. When I’d entered the police academy, I’d adopted Maggie as a nickname, thinking it sounded tougher than Margaret, only to discover that everyone was called by last name—or worse. Skerritt sounded tough enough.

  Bill, steamed at having been assigned a rookie and a woman as partner, referred to me as Mar
garet, spoken with a snooty British accent. On really bad days, I was Princess Margaret.

  “Look, Margaret,” Bill had said that first day, “I’m not here to lead you around and open doors for you. And you’re not here to strike a blow for women’s lib.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Is it true you were a debutante?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Shit, I’m stuck with a society dame.”

  “Listen, Malcolm—”

  “No, you listen. We’ve got a job to do, and to be honest, having you as a partner scares the crap out of me. If trouble goes down, I want a backup who can pull a two-hundred-pound palooka off me, not a well-bred lady who knows the right fork at a dinner party and looks like a puff of wind would blow her away.”

  For the first several months we rode together, Bill’s attitude remained cold. He was polite, unlike many others on the force, but distant, and I recognized that distance for what it was. Wariness. Bill Malcolm believed that having a woman for a partner was going to get him killed.

  Seven months after I started with the Tampa PD, we answered a domestic-disturbance call at an apartment in a public-housing project. As we raced up the walkway toward the building, a woman inside screamed in short bursts of high-pitched, staccato cries. Just before we reached the door, the yelling stopped abruptly.

  Bill banged on the door with his fist. “Open up! Police officers!”

  A small boy with terror-filled eyes and a tear-stained face pulled open the door and mutely stepped aside. On the floor in the middle of squalor and shambles lay a young woman with her eyes closed and blood oozing from a cut on her forehead.

  From that point, events moved in fast-forward. Bill rushed to the woman and knelt to check for a pulse.

  I keyed my mike. “We need an ambulance.” I verified the address for the dispatcher.

  Then all hell broke loose. The boy emitted a chilling, pulsating scream. The woman opened her eyes and latched onto Bill’s arms in terror. And a man the size of a small house burst through the kitchen doorway behind Bill.

  “I’m gonna kill you, bitch, and the pigs, too.” The blade of the machete he waved above his head caught the light from the bare bulb of the ceiling fixture.

  I drew my gun. “Drop the knife!”

  The man headed straight for Bill.

  I fired and thought I’d missed him, because he neither reacted nor slowed. I fired twice more in succession.

  The man stopped abruptly, looked down in disbelief at the bloodstains blossoming on his grimy undershirt, and collapsed on top of Bill, who still struggled to free himself from the woman’s grasp.

  The drug-crazed husband died. His wife sued the department, claiming police brutality because I had shot him three times in the chest.

  “She coulda just fired a warning shot or hit him in the leg,” the woman moaned before the television cameras. “Now my poor baby boy ain’t got no daddy.”

  The bogus charges were eventually dropped, but other results of the shooting were more lasting. When Bill extricated himself from beneath the dead man’s bulk, and we’d subdued and handcuffed the woman who’d recovered enough to assault Bill with her fists, he’d turned to me.

  “Nice work, Skerritt.”

  He’d continued to call me by my last name, until our relationship took a different turn after his divorce. The shooting at the housing project had been the beginning of the end of Bill’s marriage. His narrow escape had confirmed his wife Tricia’s worst fears.

  “I can’t spend every day waiting to see if you’ll end your shift in a body bag,” she’d told him, and filed for divorce.

  The divorce hit Bill hard, but even worse, Tricia moved to Seattle and took six-year-old Melanie with her. Bill had weekend visitation rights, but flying to Seattle was costly. And later, seeing Tricia with her new husband, an accountant with a nice safe desk job, didn’t help Bill’s broken heart, so his trips west soon ended. For the next few years, Melanie visited for two weeks in the summer, and I accompanied her and Bill to Disney World, Sea World, Busch Gardens, and every other attraction within driving distance. When Melanie reached her teens, she began to resent her visits that took her away from her friends. Bill told her she needn’t come, if she’d rather not, and had been devastated when she didn’t.

  I’d met Bill twenty-two years ago, and I think I loved him from the start. But I’d kept my emotional distance. Bill was a terrific friend, and that’s how I intended to keep things. Divorce statistics for police officers were through the roof, and I’d never been good at relationships, not even within my own family. Especially not within my own family.

  As for Bill, his daughter Melanie was now twenty-eight and married. Bill had been retired two years from the department. His brown hair had turned white, and he’d added a few pounds to his lanky six-foot frame. He’d traded his regulation uniform for khaki Dockers, knit shirts and boat shoes, but he still had the same engaging smile and innocent blue eyes….

  And one of the sharpest minds in law enforcement, a source I intended to tap for the Wainwright case. Tomorrow, as soon as I’d grabbed a few hours’ sleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  When I awakened, the first glow of sunrise tinged the waters of the sound a golden pink. By seven, I was at my desk at the station, typing the initial report on Edith Wainwright’s suspicious death. After placing the completed form on Chief Shelton’s desk, I dialed Mick Rafferty’s extension at the crime lab.

  “I know it’s Saturday,” I said when he answered, “but I took a chance you might be in.”

  “A house full of visiting in-laws from Boston convinced me I should catch up on my backlog. Now, Maggie, me darlin’, what can I do for you this fine morning?”

  “Cut the blarney and get me an analysis of the blender contents, that diet powder and the vitamins your team brought in earlier. If product-tampering caused this death, I have a list of authorities to alert.”

  “Analysis complete, darlin’. Nothing poisonous in any of it. Unpalatable, nutritious, low in calories. Boring, but not deadly.”

  I pictured the grinning Mick, young and cocky with red hair and wall-to-wall freckles. Dress him in green and he’d pass for a giant leprechaun. “What about prints?”

  “None so far, except those of the deceased.”

  “Fibers?”

  “We’re still combing through cat hair, but nothing yet. If I hit on anything, I’ll give you a call.”

  “Thanks, Mick…darlin’.”

  At least Mick’s report laid the tampering theory to rest. It also made the death more puzzling. I opened Edith’s address book and copied the short list of names, addresses and phone numbers. Sending Christmas cards had been no chore for this kid.

  The first person on the list, Tonya Wilson, lived a few miles away in Clearwater. The drive took only ten minutes through sleepy residential streets. I parked in front of a small concrete-block house with a lawn that needed mowing, then threaded my way between the Big Wheels and toy trucks on the walkway and rang the bell.

  The Miami windows were cranked open to the cool, dry October air, and the sound of cartoons blared from a television somewhere toward the back of the house. I rang the bell twice before a slender young woman with stringy blond hair, clutching a short kimono closed at her throat and looking half asleep, opened the door.

  “Tonya Wilson?”

  “Look, if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, you’re wasting your time. We’re all good Baptists here.”

  “Detective Skerritt with the Pelican Bay Police Department.” I shoved my badge through the rapidly closing door. “I need to ask a few questions. It won’t take long.”

  Tonya hesitated a moment, then pulled the door open. “If you have an extra minute, I’ll put coffee on. I don’t function in the morning without it. Maybe you’d like a cup?”

  I followed her through a cluttered living room into the kitchen. She placed a filter in the coffeemaker basket and filled it with fresh grounds.

  I pulled my note
book from my pocket. “Do you know Edith Wainwright?”

  “Edie?” Tonya was pouring water into the coffeemaker reservoir. “Sure, we work together at the telephone company. She’s not in some kind of trouble, is she?”

  “Depends on how you define trouble.” This was always the hard part. “She’s dead.”

  Tonya turned, wide-eyed, and poured water across the kitchen counter. “Holy shit!”

  Colorful language for a Baptist. I made a note of her obvious surprise. She grabbed a dish towel and mopped water from the counter. “When? How?”

  “Last night. It’s what we call a suspicious death. That’s why I’m here. What can you tell me about Edith’s frame of mind the past few days, particularly yesterday?”

  Tonya finished filling the reservoir, flipped the switch, then removed two mugs from a cabinet above the stove and set them on the counter. “Edie was flying high yesterday.”

  “Drugs?”

  She looked shocked. “No, nothing like that. Drugs aren’t Edie’s style. She’s as straight as they come. A regular Goody Two-shoes.”

  Tonya spoke of Edith as if she were still alive, a common reaction to sudden, violent death. “What did you mean by flying high?”

  She raked thin fingers through her hair and pushed it off her face. “She was pumped up. Happy. All day long she was humming and singing. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she had a big date or something.”

  She poured coffee into the mugs and offered cream and sugar. I added sugar, then sipped the steaming liquid, hoping for a jolt of caffeine. “Did she date someone special?”

  “Someone special?” Tonya laughed. “Edie doesn’t date at all. She’s…you know.”

  “Overweight?”

  “A real blimp. She has a heart of gold, a gorgeous face and a voice like pure sex, but she used to weigh close to three hundred pounds.”

  “Used to?”

  “For the past few months, Edie’s been on this diet. One of those liquid things like Oprah lost all that weight on once. And it’s working, too. She’s a real fanatic about it. Won’t look at real food, won’t even eat a measly jelly bean.”