Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  “Thanks. Let’s do lunch soon.”

  “Right.” Doris laughed at our standing joke. We both considered ourselves lucky when we had time to catch a sandwich on the run.

  After Doris left and the crime-scene unit arrived, Adler and I waited for a warrant before canvassing the house and grounds. I’d already notified Karen Englewood, who promised to call the five surviving members of her group to warn them not to take their vitamins. I arranged for a uniformed officer to collect the bottles to be checked for tainted capsules. Dr. Tillett’s wife informed me when I called that her husband would be home after lunch. I made an appointment to meet him there at two o’clock.

  Examination of the Morelli house provided little more than further confirmation of the couple’s opulent lifestyle. And the fact that Lester and Sophia occupied separate bedrooms. The floor above the living area, reached by elevator, consisted of two spacious suites, where each adjoining bath was bigger than the entire second floor of my place.

  An antique white Swedish sleigh bed heaped with lace-covered pillows centered Sophia’s room. The only touch of color came from the splash of deep blue skies in the James Harrill prints of Greek-island villages that lined her walls. On her desk, next to a diary that documented her daily weight and calorie intake, lay a one-way airline ticket to Athens for the following Tuesday.

  Lester’s room was equally colorless, but in subtle shades of gray, accented with stainless-steel and smoked glass. Weights, a treadmill and rowing machine filled half of his gigantic bathroom.

  I took the elevator to the fourth floor and inspected the two remaining rooms, Sophia’s morning room with windows on three sides overlooking the bay and Gulf, and Lester’s study. The order on his desk indicated Lester was either excessively neat or the desk was decorative rather than functional. A giant-screened television dominated the one windowless wall, and faint traces of cigarette smoke hung in the air.

  I checked the desktop, looking for a companion for the airline ticket.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Lester entered the room and strode toward me. Anger had replaced his grief.

  “Did you and your wife get along?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that? My wife is dead, and you’re prying into my home and life? I think you’d better leave.”

  He moved closer, and I backed away, placing the wide expanse of the desk between us. “You’ve seen the search warrant, Mr. Morelli, and I have to determine who poisoned your wife.”

  “Poisoned? Sophia? By vitamins? You’re crazy. She’s been taking those for years. It had to be her heart. Her doctor will confirm it.”

  The guy was in major denial. “The medical examiner knows her stuff. Your wife died from cyanide poisoning.”

  He shook his head and started around the desk. “Are you going to leave, or do I have to call my attorney?”

  “Do you need an attorney?”

  “I have the right to grieve in peace, without this intrusion.” His words blazed with anger, but the rigid line of his mouth softened and wavered, like a kid trying hard not to cry.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t want to make things any more difficult than they are. Can we just sit down and clear up a few things? Then I’ll leave.”

  I eased around the desk, grasped his elbow and led him back into the morning room. Its three sides opened to a breeze that expanded the sheer snowy draperies like sails. Bleached oak gleamed beneath our feet, and the water view created the illusion of riding a ship at sea, a peaceful contrast to the violence two floors below.

  Morelli collapsed into a corner of the white rattan sofa like a man whose bones had given way. “What do you need to know?”

  “How would you describe your relationship with your wife?”

  “I loved her.” His voice broke, and he choked out his words. “I told you, we were planning a family.”

  I took a stab in the dark. “Then why was she leaving you?”

  His head snapped up and his eyes clouded, confused. “Leaving?”

  “I found a one-way ticket to Athens on her dressing table.”

  He relaxed against the sofa back. “She was going to visit her cousins.”

  “For how long?”

  “It depended on the atmosphere when she got there. Greek families are very close, but they can also be…tempestuous.” He pressed a fist against his lips. “Jesus, now they’ll all be coming here. To her funeral.”

  “Did your wife have any enemies?”

  He leaned toward me and clasped his hands between his knees. A sunbeam hit his cinematic good looks like a klieg light. “Everyone loved Sophia. She had the disposition of an angel.”

  Only the most embittered spoke ill of the dead. “She never quarreled with anyone?”

  He laughed with a crude snort that clashed with his movie-star image. “Only her Uncle Vasily. They fought like cats and dogs.”

  “Over what?”

  “When George Gianakis died ten years ago, he left Sophia everything—the hotel, the restaurant, the bundle he made off real estate.” He glanced around the room, then out across the Gulf. “Not that any of it will do her much good now.” He buried his face in his hands.

  “Vasily?” I prompted.

  “He was always pissed that George hadn’t left him a bigger share of the family pie. After all, Vasily worked all his life in the business, but always in the shadow of his older brother, their father’s favorite.”

  “Family feuds are one thing. Murder’s another.”

  His dark eyebrows drew together in a frown. “What are you saying?”

  Murder is an ugly business. Not just the act itself, but the motives and passions that it springs from. Most people don’t like to face them, and Lester Morelli was no exception. “Can you give me Vasily’s address? I want to question him.”

  A sardonic smile lifted a corner of his mouth. “If you can track down Vasily, you’re a hell of a detective. He’s been dead five years.”

  Solving a murder—unless it’s one of those stupid acts of violence done in a moment of uncontrollable rage, like the man last summer in Tampa who stabbed his wife with a barbecue fork when she complained her steak was overcooked—is like wandering a labyrinth and running up against one dead end after another until you work your way through to an opening. I abandoned Vasily and chose another path. “Who stands to profit from your wife’s death?”

  “I can’t accept the fact that Sophia’s gone, much less that someone intentionally…” He shook his head and gazed across the water, apparently still dazed.

  I waited. Lester Morelli was either devastated or an Oscar-class performer. He looked back at me as if surprised I was still there.

  “You want to know her beneficiaries?”

  I nodded.

  “Until last week, I was her only beneficiary. In the event of Sophia’s death, everything would have gone to me. The house and money and the restaurant and resort. She thought it only fair, since I’ve managed the business for the past five years.”

  “And now?”

  “She changed her will. I agreed, of course. After all he’d done for her, how could I not? He saved her life.”

  “He?”

  “Dr. Tillett. Sophia wanted to thank him.”

  “And the extent of her gratitude?”

  “She bequeathed a million dollars to Richard Tillett and the Pelican Bay Weight Management Clinic.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Later, at noon, I surveyed the interior of my refrigerator, withdrew the last container of fat-free blueberry yogurt and a Diet Coke, and added a couple of stale chocolate chip cookies for a three-course meal. For me, a complete dinner consisted of a frozen entrée zapped in the microwave and salad from a bag. Fortunately, no one else depended on my cooking to keep from starving to death or dying from culinary boredom.

  In the tiny galley of his boat, Bill could whip up an eight-course feast, a skill that had me threatening to call his bluff on his marriage proposals on several occasions when I’d fel
t weak and hungry.

  I sat at the dining room table to complete my notes on the Sophia Morelli homicide while I ate. Lester had made no attempt to hide his status as Sophia’s heir. The fact that Tillett was also a beneficiary created a fork in the money trail. But the only connection either Lester or Tillett had with Edith Wainwright was through the clinic.

  I carried the phone to the table and punched in Adler’s number. The grogginess in his voice told me my call had awakened him. We’d both be catching whatever rest we could before this case was closed.

  “Start tracking down everything you can on Wainwright’s next of kin,” I said, “and any other friends we might not know about.”

  Silence filled the other end of the line for a long moment. “I’ll get on it first thing in the morning.”

  “Dammit, we’ve got two murders already and a possible serial killer. We can’t afford the luxury of weekends off.”

  His hand must have covered the mouthpiece, because I could hear only a muffled exchange of words. I knew nothing about Adler’s home life and wondered what I’d interrupted.

  The line cleared. “Today’s my little girl’s first birthday. We’re having a party this afternoon. Would you like to stop by?”

  I remembered Bill and Tricia and Melanie and their shattered family. And Sophia Morelli and Edith Wainwright and the children they would never have. Maybe Chief Shelton was right. I was too soft to be a cop. “One of us has to work, but I’ll drop by if I can.”

  “I’ll start digging into the info on Wainwright as soon as the party’s over.”

  “One other thing—”

  “Yeah?”

  I heard the hesitation in his voice and sympathized with the guy, his wife and daughter tugging on one side, his job on the other. No wonder so many police marriages went bust. “Find out if Edith had a will.”

  I’d no sooner clicked off the phone than it rang again. “Skerritt here.”

  “That’s an odd way to greet your mother.” Her soft, cultured tone held its usual lick of disapproval.

  “Sorry, Mother.” I’d called her Mom once as a child, and she’d reprimanded me for sounding common. “Can’t talk now. I’m on my way to interview a suspect.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  My inner child, as the psycho-babblers called it, winced, but the outer me had a hide like a gator. “I’ll place lack of social niceties on the top of my profile for the killer.”

  She sighed, as only Mother could. “I wanted to remind you about tomorrow night’s dinner at the club. Seven o’clock. Detective or not, you are still a member of this family.”

  My inner child squirmed again. Mother knew how to trowel on the guilt. I hated dinners at the yacht club even when I had the time. I got the bends every time I ascended from the depths of police work into the rarefied atmosphere of Pelican Bay’s social elite.

  “I’ll come if I can, but we’ve had two homicides over the weekend, and I’m swamped.”

  A long, disapproving silence resonated in my ear.

  “Maybe you can help me out,” I said. “What do you know about Richard Tillett?”

  “Margaret, you know I never gossip.”

  And the pope never prays. “You’re always such a good judge of people,” I schmoozed. “Just tell me what you think of him.”

  “He and Stephanie belong to our club. They’re there regularly on family night. You’ll see them for yourself tomorrow.”

  “If I can make it. Anything else on Tillett?”

  “Well…”

  Mother loved furnishing the latest skinny on Pelican Bay’s upper crust, but only after believing it had been dragged from her by wild horses. “I need to know. Two of his patients have already been killed. Others might be at risk.”

  “Oh, dear. How awful. Your father never lost a patient to murder—”

  “Not now, Mother.” If I let her start, she would reminisce about Dad’s cardiology practice for hours. “About Dr. Tillett?”

  I could picture her, sitting by her ruffled dressing table, cupping long, manicured fingers around the mouthpiece and bending her coiffed white curls closer to the phone.

  “There have been rumors,” she whispered. “Money problems. Seems the young doctor has taken up playing the greyhounds. Spends all his spare time at Derby Lanes.”

  “Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

  “You’re welcome. And can I count on you, Margaret? After all, in case you’ve forgotten, tomorrow is my birthday.”

  With that last zinger, calculated to inflict maximum guilt, she hung up on me.

  The Tilletts lived in Orangewood, a complex of high-priced homes George Gianakis had developed on gently rolling land around a lake east of town in what had been the last of Pelican Bay’s citrus groves.

  The paved entry road, formerly a sandy track to a rustic fruit stand, was marked by brick walls and black wrought-iron street lamps. A wide median, filled with crepe myrtles, azaleas and Indian hawthorn, divided the street. Although not as pricey as Pelican Point, the houses with soaring entries, palladium windows, landscaped lawns and triple-car garages didn’t come cheap. Tillett’s annual mortgage payments probably exceeded my yearly income.

  I turned right at the first corner and pulled up against the curb beside the third house, a sprawling one-story with multiple gables, tall windows and a sun-bleached exterior needing paint.

  Richard Tillett, a pleasant-looking man in his early forties with intense blue eyes, answered the door. He wore Bermuda shorts and a knit shirt that showed off his William Shatner build and deck shoes without socks. A small boy with golden curls and the face of a Botticelli cherub clung to his leg. Tillett picked up the child, and I followed them through a tiled foyer into a sunken living room.

  A slim young woman with dark hair and eyes and a worried crease between her eyebrows hurried into the room. “Jeremy, come with me. You mustn’t bother Daddy.”

  Tillett smiled, but the expression never reached his eyes. “My wife, Stephanie.”

  “We spoke on the phone,” I said.

  “Yes. I’ll leave you to your business,” she said in a snappish tone, took the child without looking at her husband and hurried from the room.

  The tension in the air was so thick I could lean on it.

  “Please forgive Stephanie. She’s upset by this. We all are.”

  He indicated the sofa and sat opposite me on the U-shaped couch, crossing first one leg, then the other, before finally resting both feet on the floor and grasping his bare knees. “Any idea who killed my patients?”

  “I’m hoping you can help me.”

  The man was a collection of jangled nerves, but his clear gaze met mine without wavering. His fingers flexed and tightened on his kneecaps. “Karen Englewood called. She met your officer at the clinic and turned over our supply of vitamin supplements and diet-drink powder for testing. She’s also alerted all our patients.”

  “Who, besides you and Karen, had access to those materials?” I dragged out my ubiquitous notebook and clicked the nib on my pen.

  Tillett shrugged. “Everybody. They weren’t locked away. Any patient could have wandered unnoticed into the room where they were stored. If Gale was busy, she often sent them in to pick up their own supplies.”

  “Gale?”

  “Gale Whatley, my office manager. Besides her and Karen, there’s Naomi Calvin, my nurse, and Gina Peyton, the lab technician.”

  The clinic seemed to be the connecting factor in the two murders, and the list of people involved in the clinic continued to grow. “I need to meet with your staff and the group that Edith and Sophia belonged to.”

  “Tomorrow at five is our regular session. Is that soon enough?”

  I nodded and scribbled a reminder in my notebook. “You were in Boca Raton all weekend?”

  “At an endocrinology seminar.” His response tumbled out too fast, like a man trying to cover for himself. “I delivered a paper on metabolism.”

  A chill current of air emanated from
the cooling vents, but a thin sheen of perspiration coated Tillett’s broad forehead. I was getting strange vibes from the good doctor. His fingers clenched his legs, creating depressed white ovals on his tanned skin.

  “So someone from the seminar can verify your whereabouts from Friday noon until you caught your plane home this morning?”

  “Not exactly.” He cleared his throat with a nervous cough. “I checked into the resort early to work on my speech and didn’t leave my room until the meeting started at ten yesterday morning.”

  “The seminar ended today?”

  “No.” He crossed his arms over his chest, tucked his hands beneath his armpits and stared out the glass doors that opened onto a swimming pool. “There was a banquet last night. It lasted late, so I flew out today. I can give you a list of attendees. They’ll verify my presence.”

  Sweat trickled down one side of his face, and he hunched his shoulder to wipe his face with his sleeve.

  “This group the victims were in,” I said, “was there any bad blood among the members?”

  His pale eyes met mine again. “Karen can tell you that. I see patients individually, so I don’t know how they interact.”

  “Did anyone on your staff have a problem with either Edith or Sophia?”

  He surged to his feet and paced the floor behind the sofa before leaning toward me with his hands on the sofa’s back. “Edith and Sophia were two of the most gentle, nonthreatening women anyone could hope to meet. It’s like they invented politeness. How anyone could—”

  Something clicked. I saw it in his eyes. “What?”

  He shook his head. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “There’s no way to know what might be helpful in a case like this.”

  “Brent Dorman, the lab technician who did blood and urine workups for the clinic.”

  “Did?”

  “I fired him two weeks ago.”

  Bingo. A disgruntled employee. “Why’d you let him go?”

  “He was rude to my patients. He told Edith she was so big, dogs probably followed her around for shade. She cried when she told me. When I confronted him, he displayed an almost pathological hatred of obese people, so I had to let him go.”