Pelican Bay

by Charlotte Douglas

  While we talked, two workers had removed the fake grass carpet that surrounded the gravesite, lowered Sophia’s coffin into the sandy soil and begun filling the grave. The sound of earth hitting the casket depressed me. I thought of all the joys of living Sophia and Edith would never experience again, thanks to some crazy who’d decided to play God.

  “I can’t dispute the poison,” I said, “but if you’d seen the photographs Castleberry created, you might think differently.”

  “Because the guy’s an artist?” Adler shook his head. “Remember John Gacy? He was an artist. Painted clowns.”

  “The serial killer?”

  “I rest my case. Some guy bought all Gacy’s paintings after he was executed and destroyed them. Maybe someone will do the same for Castleberry.”

  I climbed into my car, removed a container of Benadryl gel from the glove compartment and smoothed it over my cheeks, forearms and the backs of my hands.

  Adler got in beside me and fastened his shoulder harness. “This case really bugs you, doesn’t it?”

  “Nobody has the right to snuff out innocent people. But the worst thing is the feeling deep in my gut that the killer is only getting warmed up. If we don’t stop him soon, we’re going to have another victim on our hands.”

  “Him? You think it’s a man?”

  “I grew up in a time of gender inequality, Adler, when he was used as a general pronoun for male or female. I haven’t ruled out anyone yet, and certainly not the women in our pool of suspects.”

  I started the car, drove toward the cemetery exit and caught one last glimpse of Sophia’s grave in the rearview mirror. The gaping hole had been filled, smoothed over with dirt where the workers were laying fresh sod. In a matter of minutes, her presence had been erased forever from the face of the earth.

  “You’re back?” Mrs. Phillips glared at me over her bifocals.

  “I told Archer I’d be here Friday for the information. He’s expecting me.” I didn’t wait to be announced—walked straight past her into his office and closed the door on her astonished expression.

  Archer looked up from the reams of printouts on his desk, then sprang to his feet. “Margaret, good to see you.”

  “Cut the fake cordiality, Archer. What have you got for me?”

  “You picked yourself a couple of interesting boys. Who do you want first?” He removed two thick file folders from a basket on the corner of the desk.

  “Morelli.” I sank into the chair in front of him. “Can I have those files or should I take notes?”

  “They’re all yours, to cancel my debt, remember?” He pushed away from his desk, crossed the room with a bouncing step and yanked open the door. “Mama, run down to the grill and pick us up some sandwiches, will you?”

  He watched her gather her purse and sweater, and waited until the latch had clicked behind her before he returned to his desk and Morelli’s file. “This guy’s parents divorced when he was four. His mother dumped him in a Catholic children’s home in Illinois and disappeared. He was raised in a series of foster homes, with some claims of abuse, until eighteen. He served a brief and unremarkable hitch in the army, then moved to Los Angeles, where he lived until coming to Pelican Bay six years ago.”

  Morelli had been deserted by his parents, and now he’d lost his wife. I quelled a rush of sympathy. “Anything interesting in L.A.?”

  “Worked as a waiter, did some modeling jobs and even a few gigs as a movie extra.”

  “Did you find out why he left?”

  Archer ran a pudgy finger down the page. “Evicted from his apartment for overdue rent. Left behind a stack of bills that were eventually paid off.”

  “What’s he worth now?”

  He extracted another page from the sheaf in the folder. “Millions. Everything held in joint accounts with his wife.”

  “Did you find out why he came to Pelican Bay?”

  “Nothing concrete in the file, but I can guess. In a tourist spot, he figured he’d find work as a waiter, and Florida has become a moviemaker’s mecca. Maybe the guy had aspirations of stardom.”

  With no obvious success. But failure as an actor didn’t make him a murderer. “What about Tillett?”

  “This guy’s in trouble, big time.” Archer picked up a page and a trail of tractor paper four sheets long unfolded before him. “He’s maxed out ten major credit cards, has second mortgages on both his house and clinic, and loans on both his cars. For the past year, he’s knocked down only interest on all of those, and that’s been paid late more often than not.”

  I nodded. “Tillett plays the dogs.”

  Archer let out a whistle. “Then he could also be out big money to loan sharks who don’t keep the kind of records I can access. If that’s the case, he’s in deep doo-doo. The credit cards and mortgages alone are enough to make him desperate.”

  “Anything else suspicious?”

  He shoved the files across the desk. “That’s for you to decide. You’re the dick, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  My tactics had made him angry, and I didn’t blame him, but they’d also saved me weeks of digging. “Thanks, Archie. You’ve been a big help.”

  “Didn’t have a choice, did I?” His grimacing smile propelled me toward the door.

  I met his mother in the hall.

  “Aren’t you staying for lunch, Margaret? I bought tuna fish.”

  “I have to get back to work.” I hurried toward the elevator.

  “Take time to see a beauty consultant,” she yelled after me. “Your makeup’s still not right.”

  The Dock of the Bay, a rustic little restaurant on the opposite side of the marina from Sophia’s, had been known in earlier days as a juke joint. The ancient Wurlitzer belted out a Willie Nelson ballad as I searched through the dim light for Bill Malcolm. The supper crowd had thinned and the serious drinking crowd hadn’t arrived yet. I spotted Bill across the room, nursing a beer in a booth beside a window that framed a picture-postcard view of the marina basin.

  I slumped onto the wooden bench across from him. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You’re working too hard.” He called a waiter over and ordered burgers and fries for both of us, then reached across the table and took my hand. “When’s the last time you read a book?”

  I squeezed his rough fingers. “Give me a break. You know I’m lucky to skim the headlines in the Times every day.”

  “Reading’s your favorite pastime, but if you’ve enjoyed a good novel since our trip to the Bahamas, I’ll eat this place mat.”

  “I have Clancy’s latest on my nightstand. Does that count?”

  “Be serious, Margaret. You’re not getting any younger. This pace has to wear on you. Every day, often for twenty-four hours at a time, you have to talk like a cop, think like a criminal and act like a hero. No wonder you break out in hives.”

  “I can’t quit. Not now. It’s been a week tonight since Edith Wainwright was killed, less since Sophia’s murder, and I don’t have a prime suspect. And I’d be getting even less sleep if it weren’t for you. Any luck on the cyanide?”

  Bill had spent the last three days interviewing suppliers who carried potassium ferricyanide.

  “I’ve exhausted every source in the area, even checked as far as Tampa and Sarasota, and the mail-order suppliers. Nada on everyone, except Peter Castleberry. He’s a regular at the photography store in Clearwater, buys all his supplies there, including potassium ferricyanide. It’s used in Farmer’s reducer formula for overdeveloped or overexposed negatives.”

  “You sound like an expert.” The waiter set a mug of cold beer in front of me. I took a sip and licked foam off my upper lip.

  Bill pushed back his hair and exposed a creased, tanned forehead. “Where isn’t that poison used? I’ve learned more about blueprint paper, wood stains, electroplating, etching and photography in the past three days than I ever wanted to know. But what good is it? You’re right back where you started with Castleberry.”

  “Maybe.�
�� I told him what Archer Phillips had dug up for me. “Tillett’s in big financial trouble. Sophia’s million-dollar bequest gives him a powerful motive.”

  “And Morelli? He stands to gain more than Tillett.”

  “But Morelli already has access to all the money,” I said, “and except for the crazy aunt in Tarpon Springs, everyone insists he was devoted to his wife.”

  “Maybe the devoted husband had a little action going on the side?” Bill spread ketchup over his basket of French fries.

  “When? He works eighteen-hour days and spends all his time off at home.” I picked up the thick sandwich, a real hamburger, not the paste-and-cardboard fast-food kind. I’d had only a cup of yogurt for lunch, and my stomach grumbled with hunger. “Adler thinks Castleberry’s our man—”

  The beeper on my belt sounded.

  “When are you going to give in and buy a cell phone?” Bill asked.

  “When I’m ready to have my privacy invaded 24/7 by anyone with a phone.” I put down my burger and scooted off the bench. “There’s a pay phone in the lobby.”

  Bill grabbed my hand. “You have to eat. You can call when you’re finished.”

  “But I’d worry. It’s probably something that can wait. I’ll call and find out.”

  I should have taken his advice. I returned to the table after taking the message from the station, cast a longing look at my full plate and picked up my purse. “No supper tonight.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Must be something in the water. Another homicide.”

  “Have they identified the victim?”

  “Adult male is all they gave me. Killed on the trail.”

  Bill asked the waiter to put our order in a bag and add a couple of large black coffees. He rose to his feet. “I’m coming with you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  I drove south on Edgewater, turned onto Windward Lane and passed Karen Englewood’s house. Two blocks east, where Windward intersected the trail, a knot of emergency vehicles with pulsing red-and-blue lights marked the scene. Above them, a sheriff’s chopper hovered and swept the trail and adjacent yards with its searchlights.

  In front of the yellow tape that blocked entrance to the trail from Windward, three preteen boys gawked at officers whose flashlights winked in the darkness a hundred feet down the path.

  “It’s after ten,” I said to the boys. “Shouldn’t you go home?”

  “Cops told us to hang around,” the largest boy said. “We found the body.”

  I turned my flashlight toward him and recognized the close-cropped sandy hair and pugnacious face wallpapered with freckles. “Jason?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Jason McLeod had a rap sheet as long as my arm for vandalism, B and Es and car theft, but as a juvenile had spent almost no time in detention. The court consistently released him to the custody of his alcoholic mother, who earned her booze money through prostitution.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said. I sensed Bill’s quiet presence behind me. He’d do anything I asked, but until I asked, he’d stay in the background. He knew the protocol. This was my investigation.

  Jason wiped his nose with the cuff of a grimy sweatshirt. “We were racing on the trail. We can’t see, but that’s what makes it fun, zooming through the dark, like outer space. Then my bike hit something and sent me flying.”

  “You struck the body?” I asked.

  “Naw, the dead guy’s bike. But when I fell, I rolled right up against him. That’s when we cut out of there to the nearest yard and asked the lady to call the cops.”

  “Did you see anyone else on the trail?”

  “Just somebody running.”

  “A man or a woman?”

  Jason hunched his skinny shoulders. “Too dark. Couldn’t tell.”

  “Which way did the runner go?”

  “Headed this way, south, just before we found the body. After that, I didn’t pay no attention.”

  “You boys better get home. And stay off the trail after dark or the next body found could be yours.”

  Jason thrust his chin out and his two scruffy cohorts followed suit.

  “I ain’t afraid,” Jason said with a snarl.

  And he wasn’t, of either the law or the terrors of the night. Jason would probably end up in Raiford or the morgue, or both. I doubted even boot camp could turn him around. One of the frustrations of my job was watching a kid like Jason slide deeper into a life of crime and me without any way to put on the brakes.

  Bill loaded their bikes into the trunk of my Volvo and herded the boys into the car to drive them home, while I trekked down the blacktop toward the crime scene. The wide recreational path, a straight shot through the darkness, broken at block-long intervals by intersecting streets, was eerily quiet. I trained my flashlight over broad grassy swaths dotted with lantana verbena and gaillardia that lined the asphalt and scanned thick hedges of Turk’s cap, viburnum and ligustrum that homeowners had planted to screen their properties from the trail’s users.

  Midway down the block, an adult tricycle lay on its side in the middle of the trail, its left wheel in the air and its rider sprawled alongside, his legs tangled in the pedals.

  The helicopter passed overhead, and its searchlights illuminated the scene in unnatural light. The victim lay on his side with his face pressed into a pool of blood on the asphalt. Behind his left ear, a small dark circle marked the entrance wound. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing what the bullet had done when it exited on the other side of his face.

  Adler came up behind me. “We gotta quit meeting like this, Maggie.”

  “Call the crime-scene unit,” I said, “and ask the fire department to bring floodlights and a generator. And keep everyone else out of here.”

  “Another clinic member?”

  “Peter Castleberry. Our list at the clinic is now down to four.”

  Dawn filtered through the Australian pines that lined the eastern edge of the trail. With daylight, I could begin a more thorough investigation of the scene. During the night, Adler and I had already interviewed the homeowners whose properties backed up to the murder site, but no one had seen or heard anything until the police arrived.

  Doc Cline’s office had taken the body away a couple of hours earlier. The crime unit had worked all night in the artificial light, collecting footprints, tire treads and fiber samples, but hundreds of people used the recreational path every day, and the three boys who’d discovered Castleberry’s body had contaminated the scene as well. The small bloody footprints were almost certainly Jason McLeod’s. An area of matted grass beside the body indicated the killer might have lain in wait for his victim, but the techs came up empty when they combed the spot for evidence.

  Bill moved among the technicians and officers, handing out doughnuts and coffee in foam cups. As I drank the hot liquid, I glimpsed a familiar face behind the crime tape where the trail intersected Windward Lane. Karen Englewood, dressed in a warm-up suit in vivid neon colors, waved at me, and I walked down the path toward her.

  “I jog here every morning,” she said. “The early news said there’d been a murder last night, but they didn’t give a name.”

  “We’re trying to track down the victim’s mother before releasing the name to the press. Maybe you can help?”

  “Me?” Her face paled and her legs began to buckle. “Oh, no. Not Larry?”

  I shook my head. “Peter Castleberry.”

  “My God.”

  I slipped under the tape, grabbed her arm and led her to my car. When I opened the door, she collapsed on the front seat, gasping air through her gaping mouth like a fish out of water.

  I waited until her breathing eased. “Does the clinic list next-of-kin in its records?”

  “The office is closed on Saturdays,” she said, “but I can run down and pull his mother’s name and address from his medical file for you.”

  “The sooner, the better, so I can break the news before the media.”

  “I’ll go right awa
y.” She started to rise, but I shook my head, and she sank back onto the car’s seat.

  “Castleberry was a long way from home,” I said. “Any idea what he was doing here?”

  “He exercised to speed up his weight loss, rode his bike ten miles on the trail every night. He’d load it in his van, drive to Dunedin, unload it, then ride to Clearwater and back, every night without fail.”

  “Why at night? The trail closes at sundown.”

  Karen’s eyes filled with tears. “He couldn’t stand the ridicule, the taunting, when he rode in daylight. All the trim young jocks in spandex who laughed at him. He said he’d rather take his chances at being mugged than endure their insults.”

  I reached past her for the Benadryl container in the glove compartment. “Last night he suffered the ultimate insult.”

  “Poison again?”

  “We’re not releasing cause of death yet.” I shucked off my jacket and rubbed gel into my itching arms. “Who else knew about his exercise routine?”

  “Everybody at the clinic. He talked about it to the support group. We tried to discourage him from using the trail at night, but we understood his reasons.”

  “Did Castleberry ever mention any enemies?”

  “He had a personality that antagonized everybody he met. It was a defense mechanism, his way of rejecting people before they rejected him. I don’t know about enemies, but he didn’t have any friends.” Her color had returned and she pulled herself to her feet. “Do you think it was the same one?”

  “The same one?”

  “The same person who killed Edith and Sophia?”

  “It’s too soon to say. What do you think?”

  Karen shivered in the morning chill and pulled her jacket tighter around her. “I think everyone connected with the clinic better watch their backs.”

  “Where were you last night, between seven and ten?”

  Her head jerked as if I’d slapped her. “At home.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.” Fear blossomed in her eyes.