by Diane Capri
Gasparilla month, continued downhill from there.
CHAPTER TWO
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 9:30 a.m.
January 27, 2001
AN HOUR LATER, I’D forced myself downstairs to George’s restaurant, not quite ready to join the party in progress. I knew the day would be a lengthy one, but I was physically and emotionally drained by my father’s unexpected appearance, with a new child-bride, no less. As I went about the business of playing hostess, I didn’t fully comprehend the import of what seemed to be mundane, unrelated events.
My gaze roamed the crowd. Members and guests of the social and service club George had founded, called “Minaret Krewe,” were gathered everywhere, practically standing on top of each other.
Minaret Krewe is one of the more than thirty social clubs, or “krewes,” that participate in Gasparilla month events. Older krewes, with membership rosters as diverse as the Tampa population, had been doing so for a hundred years. At least two krewes consist entirely of women members while others celebrate the area’s Latin history or its African-American traditions. Because of Tampa’s connection to President Teddy Roosevelt, there’s even a krewe of Rough Riders.
Minaret Krewe is one of the newer ones. They named themselves after our historic home, called Minaret because of the large, steel onion dome on the top. Today, several hundred members and their guests would filter through the restaurant, beginning with breakfast and continuing until after midnight snacks.
Professional makeup artists, hired by the Krewe to transform its members into ferocious sea robbers and tawdry wenches for today’s parade, were hard at work near the staircase.
A few guests had already begun the day’s heavy drinking with mimosas, bloody Marys and several varieties of frozen coladas. Long before midnight, our home and all of Tampa would be filled with drunken revelers. There was nothing to be done except to join them.
With weary resignation, I bowed my head and asked quickly for an event way too busy for quiet chats with my father or his new bride. And for a while, my entreaty was granted.
Mid-morning, about seven hundred members of Ye Mystic Krewe stacked onto their barge made over to look like a pirate ship. José Gasparilla landed at the Tampa Convention Center and took over the city while the party at our house continued unabated. I managed to avoid Dad and Suzanne, although I caught a glimpse of them from time to time and they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
George provided traditional Gasparilla fare, non-stop food and refreshments appeared throughout the day. Cuban sandwiches and Ybor Gold beer, brewed locally in Ybor City, were available. For those seeking a full meal, there were black beans and yellow rice, George’s version of the famous 1905 Salad, and several other Cuban dishes.
Café con leche, the rich, Cuban coffee heavily laced with heated milk, flowed as freely as the beer. My caffeine of choice, I’d had a cup of that coffee in my hand the entire morning.
I glimpsed only portions of the Parade of Pirates on the television in the Sunset Bar. Parade floats populated by pirates, wenches, beauty queens, Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis members, politicians and sports figures passed slowly by the television camera. High school marching bands filled the gaps between the krewes.
The local news anchor had dressed like a crusty buccaneer and joined the parade. From time to time, he interviewed a few of the half-million or so spectators lining the sidewalks along Bayshore Boulevard.
Most parade watchers were dressed in heavy coats, hats and gloves. Mother Nature, apparently out of sorts, had decided the high today would be forty-three degrees. What warmth the sun provided was overcome by the gusty, cold wind. I shivered in sympathy, hands folded at the elbows, providing my own warmth and glad to be inside.
When I turned away from the television, two of my favorite people in the world were standing next to me. “I’m so glad you could come,” I said to Margaret Wheaton as I hugged first her and then her husband. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, Ron. How are you feeling?”
Margaret, my secretary and good friend, looked tired and older than her sixty-something years. She is a kind person, always helping, never asking much for herself. At work, Margaret seemed to be handling her husband’s terminal illness with compassion and very little fuss. Only someone who knew her as well as I did would have noticed the toll on her.
“As well as can be expected,” Ron replied to my question. He held my hand, with little strength. “Thank you for inviting us today. I don’t go to many parties.” He said this without self-pity, but it made me sad just the same. “Who knows how many Gasparillas I have left?” Anyone could see the answer to that question was “not many.”
Ron was dying of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, abbreviated ALS. Often called Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS is a progressive wasting away of certain nerve cells of the brain and spinal column called motor neurons. The motor neurons control the voluntary muscles, which are the muscles that control movement.
The disease would eventually kill Ron when the muscles that allowed him to breathe ceased to function. In the meantime, since Ron continued to be fully aware of himself and his condition, Margaret had told me his mental depression was overwhelming them both. I could barely force myself to think about Ron’s illness, and I wasn’t living the nightmare twenty-four hours a day like the Wheatons were. Had I been in Ron Wheaton’s shoes, I’d have been investigating euthanasia.
“He’s doing much better lately, thank you,” Margaret put in. “If he gets his rest, he can still square dance with the best of them.” I saw the grief she tried to conceal behind the false cheer as Margaret put her arm through her husband’s and he patted her hand.
Ron was a tall man, once robust but now thin and frail. Leaning against a bar stool for support, he smiled down on his diminutive wife with a deep level of love that was almost painful to watch.
“Sure, honey, as long as I do it in my chair.” He nodded to a wheelchair sitting in a corner not far from where we stood. “I get tired quickly,” he said to me, by way of explanation.
My sorrow for him and for Margaret coursed through my body and caused me to shiver involuntarily. There was nothing I could do for Ron. Nothing anyone could do. I felt every bit as helpless as I really was.
We talked a few minutes longer, until another guest demanded my attention and I was forced to return to my hostess role, when I’d have preferred to stay with Ron and Margaret. I made a silent vow to spend more time with them both as I made my way over to help another elderly guest find a comfortable chair. But I never got the chance.
Later, I stopped into the Sunset Bar and glanced up to see the television reporter interviewing Gil Kelley, the current King of the Minaret Krewe, outside on the street along the parade route.
“What do you think of our parade, King Kelley?” the reporter asked him. Gil’s answer was drowned out by an upsurge of laughter inside the Sunset Bar.
Gil’s makeup, created here this morning, was particularly good. He had a wicked looking slash wound down the left side of his face with fake blood oozing out of it, and one of his front teeth was blacked out, giving him a snaggle-toothed appearance. Gil’s black hat, colorful yellow silk blouse, tight black pants and long sword were realistic enough. His all-too-real shaggy grey hair and paunch completed the expensive, if stylized, version of pirate wear. In his costume, he looked nothing like the president and majority shareholder of Tampa Bay Bank, which he actually was.
“Isn’t he dashing?” his wife, Sandra Kelley, said when she saw me watching Gil on television. Sandra herself was dressed in the twenty-first century version of a promiscuous wench’s costume, an off-the-shoulder red blouse and a full yellow skirt that matched her husband’s blouse. She wore several strands of cheap red and purple and green Gasparilla beads around her neck.
“Yes,” I smiled down at her, “he certainly does.” I nodded emphatically. “Or were you talking about Gil?” We both laughed.
“You and George are so good to have the Krewe here,�
� she said.
The comment seemed genuinely pleasant and thus unlike Sandra Kelly. “Are you having a good time?”
Sandra frowned daintily, a slight downward bend to her plucked black eyebrows over the bridge of her pert nose. The snide Sandra we all knew well resurfaced. “I was. Until he came in.” She inclined her head toward a man I didn’t recognize talking with Ron Wheaton, who seemed more exhausted. He was leaning against a wall and appeared to need the support.
“Who is that?” I asked Sandra.
“It’s Armstrong Otter. The one and only.” The disdainful tone conveyed her opinion precisely. There were two famous jewelers from the small beach community of Pass-a-Grille across the bay. One was the highly regarded Evander Preston. Armstrong Otter was the other.
Not wanting to encourage Sandra Kelly’s brand of vicious gossip, I said, “I don’t know Mr. Otter.”
“So much the better,” she snapped. “If Otter crawled back under whatever rock he slithered out from, all of Tampa would be better off.”
Sandra’s ire encouraged me to examine Otter more closely. He and Ron Wheaton appeared to be engaged in a serious conversation, although I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Of course, Ron was one of the kindest souls on the planet. He would have been pleasant to Jack the Ripper.
The same could not be said of Sandra Kelley. At least, no one who knew her said so. I’d never liked Sandra and every time I saw her, she reinforced by initial distrust. I took her venom with a side order of antidote as I excused myself to attend to our other guests.
Or so I told Sandra Kelley. What I really did was to escape in the opposite direction when I saw my newly-minted stepmother headed my way. The absurdity of having a stepmother more than ten years younger than me struck me again.
The onslaught of guests, my lack of sleep and exercise today, and the stress of seeing Dad cozying up to Suzanne finally overcame me. It was only early afternoon but I was exhausted. I figured no one would notice if I ducked out, so I trudged up the stairs to our flat, dodging people seated and standing everywhere, until I reached our bedroom. Thankfully, even though there is a television in our room, no one had camped out there. I locked the door and collapsed on top of the damask comforter, in the mistaken certainty that nothing more serious than my father’s new wife could possibly happen for the rest of the day.
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CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS
Judge Wilhelmina Carson
The Six Bills
William Harris Steam, III (Trey)
Willetta Johnson Steam (Billie Jo)
William Walter Westfield (Walter)
William Richard Gutierrez (Ricky)
William Lincoln (Linc)
John William Tyson (Johnny)
William Harris Steam, IV (Harris)
Eva Raines Steam
Willetta Steam (Billie)
Wilhelmina Steam (Willie)
William Steam, Jr. (Bill)
Mary Steam
Prescott Roberts
Ursula Westfield
Janet Gutierrez
Court Personnel
Chief Ben Hathaway
Chief Ozgood Livingston Richardson (Oz or CJ)
Augustus Ralph
Wilhelmina Carson’s Family
George Carson
Kate Austin Colombo
Leo Colombo
Jason Austin
PROLOGUE
Tampa, Florida
August 1972
SHE WASN’T QUITE SLEEPING when she heard him arguing with someone outside. He slammed the front door and came into the small rented house on South Packwood Avenue they’d lived in since their child was born. He was drunk. And angry. He stumbled around in the living room and fell a couple of times. She heard him curse under his breath; loud enough to penetrate the old plaster walls. She withdrew into her thin sleep shirt and burrowed down deeper under the covers, as if she were the child instead of her two-year-old son in the next room.
The third time her husband fell down, he knocked an old ceramic lamp off the end table closest to the kitchen. She heard the lamp crash to the floor and shatter. The light bulb must have been turned on because it gave the little “poof” of an explosion they sometimes make when they break. He let out a stream of curses as he rose to his feet and shuffled loudly into the kitchen. He was swearing at the pain, so he must have hurt himself in that last fall, the one that broke the lamp.
She heard him open the refrigerator and heard the beer bottles clank as he took one out, and then set it down, hard, on the counter. He stumbled again and knocked over one of the chrome kitchen chairs with the red vinyl seats. They’d bought those chairs at a yard sale from one of the neighbors when they’d first moved here from the college dorm where they’d met and fallen in love. She remembered the day vividly because it was one of the earlier, happier times.
When the chair crashed to the floor, he bellowed aloud in fresh outrage, jerking her back to the moment. She shook, involuntarily, with fear. She heard him pick up the chair and set it down heavily, leaning on it, maybe, so that it scooted away from him, scraping along the floor. She could hear his constant stream of angry words, but tried not to listen to them. She prayed he’d be quiet, that he’d stop cursing, pass out or something.
He stayed in the kitchen for a good long time. She heard him get another beer from the refrigerator and her heart sank. She knew what was coming. Soon, he’d stumble his way into the bedroom where she lay shivering in the cool morning air and the darkness. He would reek of booze and pot. He’d want to have sex and she wouldn’t be able to keep him off her.
Unless she could get away. Trying to leave while he was in the house would mean she’d have to be quick. If he saw her, he’d never let her go. Absently, she rubbed the fresh bruise on her wrist where he’d grabbed her and held her too tightly before.
She got up from the bed and slipped into the pair of jeans she’d worn for the gig earlier that night. She slid her feet into cheap vinyl thongs, remembering the glass that would be all over the living room floor from the broken lamp. She looked around for a warmer shirt, and could only find one of his lying dirty and crumpled in the corner. Since it was better than nothing against the chill, she slipped the shirt on. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at his permeating smell as the shirt engulfed her in his stifling embrace, squeezing her breath away.
Now she hastened across the narrow hallway, carefully, as silently as she could with the flip-flop noise the thongs made every time she took a step. She crunched up her toes to keep the shoes quiet, and made her way into her son’s room. Miraculously, the boy had slept through the noise of the crashing lamp and the sounds coming from the kitchen. She was grateful. She’d seen too many tears in the sensitive little boy’s eyes, heard too many of his cries during all the similar evenings that had passed before this one.
She bundled the baby up in a blanket and carried him into the living room. Sneaking past the door to the kitchen, she picked up her car keys but had to leave her purse. The child was heavy and awkward. She couldn’t carry anything more.
Opening the door quickly, holding her breath, she made it out to the porch. He hadn’t seen her, although she’d had to dash right past the open archway between the kitchen and the small living room. She didn’t try to close the door behind her. No time. She hurried out to the driveway and laid her still-sleeping son on the back seat.
She shouldn’t have returned to the house for her purse. If she’d just left without her purse, he would never have seen her at all. They wouldn’t have struggled with the knife. He wouldn’t have fallen. She hadn’t thought she’d hurt him. He was so much bigger than she, so much stronger. How could she have hurt him?
But she got out. She quickly returned to the car, started the engine, and sped away, leaving a storm of dust in the dirt driveway.
Hours later, after she’d wrestled free of her fear and mustered her courage, she returned to the house. By then the sun was well up over the
horizon. Clear blue sky promised a perfect new day, she hoped.
Maybe he’d still be sleeping. Or awake and hung-over, but not so terribly angry. In her daydream, he apologized. Hugged her and held his son. He’d maybe take them out to breakfast, later. The little boy liked to go to the Old Meeting House and eat pancakes with blueberry syrup and whipped cream. He liked the little link sausages and the coffee with cream and sugar that he drank just like his daddy. They’d be the close, loving family she’d always imagined— the family they had been for a while before her husband had become so popular with his fans.
But that never happened. Instead, when she came back to the little house, she found him still lying on the floor where she’d left him hours before. She checked, but he wasn’t breathing. Bewildered, without knowing how it happened, she stood over her dead husband, her clothes covered in his blood, her hand holding the knife that killed him. She clutched the old shirt closer around her body, seeking comfort now in the smell of him, as if he still hugged her.
She had only pushed him to get away. Their struggle couldn’t have hurt him so badly. There was so much blood. It covered everything. Blood was everywhere in the small house.
Horrified, through her tears, she saw her son run to his father. “Daddy, wake up,” he said, laying his small head on his father’s bloody chest until he, too, was covered with the gooey mess.
PART ONE
GOOD INTENTIONS
CHAPTER ONE
Tampa, Florida
Mother’s Day
Thirty years later
WHEN DID EVERYTHING BEGIN to unravel?
“Begin at the beginning,” my mother used to tell me. But where was that?
If I could have found that spot, the point where it all started, maybe I could have changed the outcome. Maybe they would all still be alive.