Bill slipped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me closer, pressing me against his warm, reassuring bulk. “You’re a wonder, Margaret. A cop for more than twenty years, and still an idealist.”
I snuggled closer. “It’s a nasty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”
“Not only nasty, it’s unending. You nab this guy, another takes his place. When do you say, ‘enough’?”
“Not yet. I’ll know when the time’s right.” I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The last thing I remembered was his removing the mug from my grip.
I dreamed. The sky curved overhead, and suddenly patches of blue flaked away like falling plaster, revealing water-soaked laths. “Tsunami,” a voice whispered, and the wave came, lifting me off my feet. The crest of the comber carried me away, and I struggled to regain my footing.
Still rocking on the wave, I opened my eyes. I lay in the wide double bed in Bill’s cabin with the sun peeking through the curtains. My body felt rested, but feelings of doom and frustration lingered from my strange dream.
“Breakfast is ready,” Bill called from the galley. “But there’s time for a shower if you like.”
I used the tiny toilet in the head, washed my face in the midget-size sink and brushed my teeth with a finger and Bill’s toothpaste, banging my elbows on the bulkhead in the process.
When I scooted onto the bench in the dining nook, Bill poured dollops of batter onto a hot griddle. I dug into a compote of mangoes and sliced bananas sprinkled with lime juice. When I finished, Bill placed a stack of pancakes and a bottle of blueberry syrup at my place.
“I can’t eat all that.”
“Sure you can.” He drizzled syrup over his own jumbo stack. “You have work to do, and work takes energy.”
“Maybe I should burn some of the energy from my bulging thighs instead.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your thighs.” He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned. “This case has made you oversensitive.”
“That, too. My hives still flare up at least once a day.”
“Last night you said you needed my help. What do you want me to do?”
“It’s time to put a few of our suspects under surveillance. If Adler and I juggle Dorman between us, will you tail Tillett for me?”
“Sure. But what about Karen Englewood? She’s connected to all the victims, the last murder took place a couple blocks from her house, and what could be the murder weapon was found in her desk. Does she have an alibi for the night Castleberry was shot?”
I shook my head. “But what’s her motive? She cares about these people.”
“Does she? Or is that what she wants you to believe?”
I set down my fork. “What makes you say that?”
“This killer, whoever it is, is a sadistic bastard, playing with your head, switching MOs, planting the gun and staging a break-in for you to find it.”
“If Karen’s the killer, it doesn’t make sense for her to plant a gun to implicate herself.”
Bill smiled and wiped a drip of syrup off his chin. “Exactly what she’d want you to think.”
I remembered the card I’d found at Edith’s house with Karen’s name typed on it. Had it been dropped accidentally or left on purpose? “Are you saying she should be tailed instead of Tillett?”
“If you had the necessary manpower for this case, you’d tail ’em all. But I doubt you can make a tightwad like Councilman Ulrich understand that.”
“Start with Tillett for now,” I said.
“Give me his address. I’ll begin right after breakfast. What about Morelli?”
“Adler and I can keep tabs on him while we watch Dorman. According to the maître d’, Morelli spends most of his time three sheets to the wind in his office at the restaurant. My project du jour is Larry Englewood. He hates his mother’s clients, hangs out on a spoil island near Morelli’s house, and could be the one who stashed the gun at his mother’s place and made it look like a break-in.”
Bill pointed to my plate. “First, your breakfast. It’s getting cold.”
I took a bite of pancake that melted on my tongue. “God, Malcolm, is there anything you can’t do?”
He gave me a funny look. “Yeah. Convince you to marry me.”
I laughed, but my heart skipped a beat.
None of the three names Karen gave me were listed in the telephone directory, but when I called the Clearwater PD, the desk sergeant gave me the same address for all three. Each had priors for narcotics possession, petty larceny, and drunk and disorderly.
Sunday boaters crowded the channel as I drove along the waterfront toward Clearwater. Where the road curved inland, away from the water’s edge, urban blight began. I found the address I was looking for on the west side of North Fort Harrison Avenue, a once-grand two-story house built in the 1920s, now run-down and converted into apartments. Its peeling coat of Bermuda coral paint did little to brighten its curb appeal.
Larry’s Trans Am was parked around back, and I climbed the iron outdoor staircase to reach the apartment number listed on the address. I knocked at the door several minutes before a young man with his face half hidden by an unruly mop of black hair answered. He tucked a thick strand behind one ear and stared at me with dilated pupils. “What?”
“I’m not selling Avon.” I displayed my badge. “Detective Skerritt, Pelican Bay Police—”
The room behind him erupted into a cacophony of curses and moving bodies. Deep in the apartment’s interior, a toilet flushed. The kid at the door glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the activity.
I paused, waiting until the toilet had flushed once more and hoping more illegal drugs had vanished down the tubes, before I continued. “I’m looking for Larry Englewood.”
The kid at the door looked past me to Larry’s car parked behind the house, and I wondered if the apartment had a rear door. From the dilapidated look of the fire-trap of a building, I doubted it.
“You got a warrant?” he said.
“No. There was trouble at his mother’s place last night, and I want to talk to him about it.”
Larry appeared and pushed the kid out of the way. “Mom, is she okay?”
The odor of stale beer, unwashed bodies and pot drifted through the open door, and I almost tossed Bill’s gourmet pancakes. “Your mom’s fine, just shaken up. Can we talk somewhere else?”
He pulled the door closed behind him and pointed down the street that ran alongside the house to the bay. “There’s a dock where Ace and Stuey keep their boat. We can walk down there.”
I followed him down the stairs, then fell in step beside him. He looked younger than the first time I saw him, more vulnerable without the anger that had hardened his face. “Where were you last night?”
“What happened to Mom?”
“You answer my questions, I’ll answer yours.”
He shoved his hands in his back pockets, and I lengthened my stride to keep up with his long-legged gait.
“Ace, Stuey and I were on the spoil bank. Spent most of the night there.”
“Doing what?”
“Just hanging, drinking beer. That’s not illegal, is it?” He attempted surliness but came across scared.
“Not if that’s all you did.”
We walked onto the wooden pier where a white outboard was moored. I tested the sturdiness of the wooden railing, then leaned against it and watched the young man at my side. His clothes looked as if he’d slept in them, and although he’d pulled his long hair back and tied it at his neck, its snarls and tangles hadn’t seen a comb in days. He looked weary, hungry and gaunt.
“Why don’t you go home, Larry? Why stay in a place like that?” I pointed toward the apartment house that looked even more ramshackle and dangerous from the bayside.
“And have Mom on my back all the time? Forget it.”
“What was she on you about?”
I expected him to mouth off about minding my own business, but he surprised me. He lowered himself to a sitting position on the dock,
pulled off his Nikes and dipped his bare feet in the water.
“About getting a job, keeping decent hours, like I’m some little kid. No wonder my dad left her.”
“A job and decent hours sound pretty grown-up to me. What’s really bugging you?” Funny how sometimes folks will say things to a stranger they’ll never admit to someone they know. Larry was no exception.
“Since my dad left, I never see him. If she hadn’t asked him to leave, things would be different.”
“Why did your folks split?”
“Mom said Dad was catting around. He denied it, but he left. I haven’t seen him since I was fifteen, and it’s all her fault.”
“How come? No visitation rights?”
“Yeah, he has ’em. She gave him everything he asked for, just to get rid of him.”
“Then if he really wanted to see you, he could?”
He looked at me as if I’d hit him. “That’s what Mom says.”
“Maybe you’re blaming the wrong person. Why don’t you find your dad and talk to him, clear the air?”
He kicked his foot and splashed salty water over both of us. “When are you going to tell me what happened to my mom?”
“Do you own a gun?”
“Hell, no. Mom would freak if I brought a gun into the house. She’s terrified of them.”
“I have an eyewitness who puts you and one of your friends on the beach outside Sophia Morelli’s house the day she was murdered.” I was groping in the dark again, but sometimes I bumped up against my best leads that way. “What were you doing on Pelican Point at six in the morning that day?”
I’d hit the mark. Larry didn’t move. Water lapped the pilings beneath the dock, and a seagull screeched overhead, but everything else was quiet in the October morning. I lifted my face to the sun and wished I hadn’t left my sunglasses in the car.
When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, like a child’s. “I don’t remember much. We’d been—” He looked at me with anxious eyes. “We smoked pot all night. Stuey said it would be a kick to see how the other two percent live, so we took the boat over to Pelican Point. The water’s the only way to get around the security guards.”
“What did you do there?”
“Nothing, I swear it. We just walked up and down the beach, wondering how much money it took to live in houses like those. Then Stuey spots some old guy on a balcony, and we took off.”
“Did you see anyone else? Notice anything unusual?”
“No, if you don’t call living like royalty unusual.” He rubbed his palms against his thighs, then crossed his arms over his chest. Fear softened his features, making him appear younger than his nineteen years. Unlike so many of the antisocial juveniles I’d dealt with, Larry obviously knew the difference between right and wrong and cared about the consequences. Somewhere along the way, his parents had done their job.
He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. “Are you going to arrest me?”
I shook my head. “Three of your mother’s clients have been murdered in the past week, the last one just two blocks from her house. And someone broke into her house last night.”
He snapped his head around and stared at me. “You’re sure she’s okay? Nobody hurt her?”
I kneeled on the dock beside him and placed my hand on his shoulder. “Nobody’s hurt her yet. But she may be in danger. She’d be safer if you were there.”
He jerked away from my touch. “She doesn’t want me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. Think about it.”
I left him dangling his feet in the bay and returned to my car. I had a hell of a nerve offering advice to anyone on how to get along with his mother.
My beeper sounded as I headed north toward Pelican Bay. I spotted a pay phone at a convenience store, pulled in and dialed the station.
“Bill Malcolm left you a message,” Darcy said. “Wants you to meet him in the hospital emergency room.”
CHAPTER 18
The hospital’s automatic doors shushed open, and I darted into the cool artificial light of the hall and the smell of antiseptic and recycled air. A perky young woman with a cheerleader smile looked up from a computer monitor at the reception desk.
“Bill Malcolm?” I asked.
She pointed down the hallway. “In the waiting room.”
I spotted Bill, dressed in denim shorts and a T-shirt, sprawled on a vinyl sofa watching Meet the Press with about twenty other patients and their families. He jumped to his feet when he saw me.
“Thank God you’re okay.” I shoved away dark memories resurrected by the ER. “What are you doing here?”
“Following Tillett.”
“Don’t tell me another of his patients is dead,” I hissed in his ear.
“It’s not that simple.” He glanced around the crowded waiting room. “Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”
In the deserted corridor, I turned on him. “What gives?”
“After you left this morning, I drove to Tillett’s house and parked up the street. Tillett’s Infiniti was in the drive. After a while, Tillett comes out, gets into his car and drives off. I slid in behind him at a distance. Everything’s fine until he hits the intersection at Orangewood and Main. The light’s red, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow down, and a blue Bronco broadsides him.”
“Injuries?”
“Driver of the Bronco was treated and released. Tillett’s in one of the trauma rooms. Paramedics at the scene said he’s got a broken arm. Would’ve been worse if he hadn’t had air bags.”
“Did the investigating officer question Tillett?”
“He swears his brakes failed.”
“What do you think?” I scratched the back of my hands where welts had erupted with new vigor.
“Could be mechanical failure, an accident.” He leaned above me, one hand braced on the wall. “Could be somebody fixed his brakes.”
“Would you check with the garage where the car was towed? Find out if the brakes were tampered with.” I hated to ask, but Adler was trailing Dorman, and I had to question Tillett.
Bill nodded. “There’re a couple other possible explanations for Tillett’s accident.”
“Suicide attempt?”
“That, or a diversion. An accident he planned himself to make it look like someone was out to get him.”
I considered the implications. If Tillett was a victim, or perceived as a victim, he’d knock himself off the list of suspects. “If the latter’s true, he took a helluva chance.”
Bill raised his eyebrows. “Desperate times—”
“I know, desperate measures. Maybe he did risk it. The man’s a chronic gambler. Call me when you have some info on the brakes.”
We walked toward the entrance. Bill marched straight out the doors, and I showed my badge to the receptionist. “I want to see Dr. Richard Tillett. EMS brought him in a while ago.”
An ER nurse in blue scrubs led me to a cubicle in the trauma room and whisked aside a curtain. Tillett lay still and pale against the sheets, his head swathed in bandages, his left arm in a cast.
“Try not to excite him,” the nurse said, “but don’t let him drop off to sleep, either. We want him awake while we monitor his concussion.”
She drew the curtain around us when she left, and I moved to his right side.
“Rough morning, Doctor?” I asked.
He shifted, tried to sit up and winced in pain. “Could have been worse. At least I’m still breathing.”
“Want to tell me what happened?”
“I was headed here to make my Sunday rounds. When the light changed at Main, I hit the brakes, but nothing happened. Damned pedal went all the way to the floor. I grabbed the emergency brake, but it was too late.”
The skin around his left eye was puffed and dark, and someone had stitched the peak of his left eyebrow. If the Bronco had been going a few miles faster, I’d have another name to add to my list of clinic fatalities. “Brake failure?”
“Couldn’t have been.
My car’s almost new. Just had it in for its three-thousand-mile checkup. Somebody must have tampered with them.”
“Don’t you keep your car locked in your garage overnight?”
“I gave my daughter a Ping-Pong table for her birthday a few weeks ago. It’s set up in the garage, so there’s only room for Stephanie’s car. Mine stays in the driveway. Anybody could’ve had access to it.”
Aware of doctors and nurses bustling in and out of the adjoining cubicles, I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “I know you’re in debt up to your eyeballs. You owe anybody money who might resort to drastic collection techniques?”
“I may be foolish enough to run up debts, but I know enough to stay away from the tough guys.” He shook his head, grimaced with pain and lay still. “I joined Gamblers Anonymous, and I’m slowly knocking down my bills. It’ll take a while, but I’m determined. I owe it to my wife and kids.”
“A man like you must carry a lot of insurance. Enough to clear your debts and leave a comfortable sum for your family?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m no coward, Detective. Suicide would be the gutless way out.”
“Where did you go when you left the country club yesterday?”
“Straight home. And my brakes worked fine then. I didn’t leave the house until this morning.”
If I’d placed Bill on surveillance sooner, he might have caught whoever had played havoc with Tillett’s brakes. For now, I was left with only speculation. Tillett had some speculations of his own.
“You think whoever did this is the same person who killed Castleberry and the others?”
“I intend to find out.”
Chaos erupted in the trauma section as a new patient was wheeled in. The patient’s screams, doctors shouting instructions to nurses, and the cloying, coppery smell of blood filled the air.
Tillett’s blue eyes locked gazes with mine. “You and I are a lot alike. I deal with illnesses and injuries that affect the body. You struggle against the diseases of society, crime that festers like a wound and sometimes kills. Either way, we both encounter more death, destruction and sorrow than any human being should have to witness and still be able to sleep at night.”
Pelican Bay Page 16