by Diane Capri
I’d heard this story before.
Had Otter believed he could run this scam indefinitely?
“So why not let him take it back and wash your hands of the whole matter? Except for looking foolish, which isn’t a crime and has never killed anyone that I know of, you wouldn’t have been any worse off for the experience.” I’d been right. CJ was a twit after all. Pride before the fall and all. Such an old story.
“I should have. Of course, I know that now. At the time, all Mariam and I could think of was what other people would think. Everybody we knew was aware of that necklace. We just couldn’t act like we’d never owned it. We certainly didn’t want to be named in a defamation suit.” CJ said Mariam wore the necklace less frequently until, in the last few years, she hadn’t even had it on. People seemed to have forgotten. And CJ got a good deal from Otter on anything else he ever bought. All of which CJ had appraised before paying, by the way.
“I think, over the years, he’d made it up to me in discounts on other pieces. And we just let it be our little secret.” He finished his drink and set the glass down between us on the table.
“Why do I get the feeling we haven’t heard the whole story?” I said, even though George kicked me under the table.
CJ grimaced as if he’d swallowed a sour lime. “It was the whole story. Until last week. Otter called me at home and told me about the Fitzgerald House case. He said it was just like my situation.”
CJ sounded parched again, and I shook my head at the waitress to keep her from offering him another round.
“And he suggested he’d let people know about it unless you could make the Fitzgerald House case go away, is that it?” I suggested, as CJ nodded miserably.
“You didn’t kill Otter over this, did you?” George asked CJ, straight out.
“No!” he blurted, then added more quietly, “But we argued about it. More than once. People might have heard us.”
My heart sank, because I knew what was coming next. “When did you see him last, CJ?” I asked him.
“Saturday night. Late. In Ybor City after the Knight Parade.”
“What happened?”
“We argued. I pushed him. And I left him there. Alive. I swear.” CJ was trembling now, wanting another drink.
Now, I had the upper hand with the CJ and I didn’t want it. It was one thing to play my little power games with him when I knew they weren’t hurting anyone. But in this case, his wife’s pride and his own ego got him way more than he bargained for.
“CJ, you really should tell all of this to your lawyer and see what you can work out with the Judicial Counsel. Because I won’t complain, your call to me isn’t something that should get you impeached. You’ll get a slap on the wrist over it. That’s all. You’ll never be appointed to the Court of Appeals. But, no one needs to know. Resolve it confidentially. Do it now,” I urged him, as sympathetically as I could, but he remained seated, not willing to give up yet.
He still thought he could persuade me to lie for him. Given his track record with trying to control me, his confidence was sorely misplaced. “Do it before they put me back on the witness stand and ask me about this entire conversation, which you know they will do,” I told him.
That seemed to galvanize him to action. He said he needed to call his lawyer. Knowing who was defending him, I hoped the CJ would offer to let the lawyer keep his retainer to resolve the case. Otherwise, the lawyer wouldn’t let the matter drop. None of us needed to let this get out of hand any more than it already was.
Before he left, I had one more question. “How did the Judicial Counsel find out about this, anyway?”
CJ seemed genuinely puzzled by this. “I don’t know. Anonymous tip, I was told. Neither Mariam nor I told anyone, you can be sure of that. It makes no sense that Otter would have tipped them. But someone did.”
The next morning, I was waiting on the couch in the lobby at the AmSouth building at 100 North Tampa Street for the bank to open. I didn’t want to make the mistake of going to my office and being delayed again so that I missed the opportunity to get into Ron Wheaton’s safety deposit box.
The grey marble gothic building graced Tampa’s skyline with sufficient grandeur to win an award for Building of the Year not long ago. Its interior lobby soars four stories and larger-than-life murals painted on the walls soften the stark echo of the unforgiving granite. Some days, a string quartet or a classical flamenco guitarist play here during the lunch hour. This morning, the lobby was filled with office workers traveling from the parking garage on the north side of the building to the elevator banks in each wing, beginning their work day.
The building’s tenants included a more than ample supply of lawyers and bankers, so I’d had to talk to quite a few people as they arrived for work, even though I’d had my nose buried in the Wall Street Journal, hoping that it would keep my privacy. Instead, all it did was to give peo-ple a conversational opening.
“Morning, Judge. Anything good going on in the market?”
“Hello, Judge Carson. How about that NASDAQ?”
“Judge Carson, good to see you again. Hard to believe Microsoft is merging, isn’t it?”
In truth, I hadn’t read a word in the paper. I was too preoccupied. That didn’t seem to matter to my colleagues as they greeted me with enthusiasm and chattered on without regard to my minimal responses.
A few minutes after ten o’clock, a woman opened the glass door to the AmSouth branch office and I followed her inside, asking where the safety deposit boxes were kept. I provided my name and my key to the guardian, signed the register, and was shown to a row of silver boxes along a narrow corridor inside a locked gate.
The guardian, a burly security guard with a gun, put his key in box number 372 and turned it. Then, he put my key in the other keyhole and turned it. This caused a small door to pop open, giving him a view of the black metal box inside. He slid the long, narrow black box from its slot and showed me to a small room, placing the box on the plain metal table in front of a metal folding chair. With a nod, he closed the door and left me alone with the box that Ron Wheaton had wanted me to have.
I pulled a regulation length, eleven-inch legal pad and a blue Flair pen, my writing instrument of choice, out of my briefcase, laid them on the table and opened the box. Inside, I saw two regular, white number-ten business envelopes. Both were sealed. One had my name written on it. The other was addressed to Margaret.
I opened the envelope addressed to me and removed three sheets of letter-sized paper. One page was a list of assets. The other two contained a hand-written letter signed by Ron Wheaton. I glanced at the list of assets and was both surprised and chagrined at the value of Ron’s estate. He left more than enough money to support a motive for murder, if the multi-million dollar life insurance policy was paid out.
I was happy and concerned for Margaret at the same time. Ben Hathaway would surely feel seven million dollars was an ample motive for murder, if Margaret knew about the money, which she probably did. I shook my head at the over-protectiveness Ron had demonstrated for Margaret, even in contemplation of death.
Ron Wheaton had earned a modest living, and both he and Margaret were comfortable with their chosen lifestyle. Ron had far over-insured himself long before he was diagnosed with ALS. Perhaps the insurance was cheaper because he bought it through the school system where he worked. Who knows? I just never figured Ron Wheaton for a guy with a desire to be wealthy. Yet, he apparently wanted Margaret to be well-heeled after he died. He surely never believed his attempted largess might cause Margaret more harm than good.
One of my former law partners, who was on his sixth wife, once told me that men don’t leave a marriage unless they have somewhere to go. Chief Hathaway’s theory must be the same for women, too. He believed Margaret was having an affair with Otter and killed her husband to be free of Ron so she and Otter could be together. Hathaway thought Otter had money, though. When he found out Margaret was the wealthy one, would Hathaway be more convinced that Margaret had killed
her husband? Or less?
I set the asset list aside for the time being, and read the letter addressed to me.
“Dear Willa, Please forgive me for not discussing this with you personally,” it began, in a way that made tears well up in my eyes. This was just like something Ron Wheaton would have said to me before he died. He was always polite and kind. He thought of everyone before himself.
Even in death, he was still Ron.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tampa, Florida
Wednesday 10:25 a.m.
February 21, 2001
HIS LETTER CONTINUED, “but I am truly hoping you will never need to know what I am about to tell you. If things change soon, I will have destroyed this letter before you’ve ever seen it. If not, I am dead now and you are the only one I can count on to take care of my Margaret.”
Chills ran up my spine as I read these words.
Ron knew he was going to die before his ALS killed him. Would he name his killer? I read the rest of the letter.
“Margaret is having an affair. I don’t begrudge her happiness and I would give her permission to love this man, if he was worthy of her. But he isn’t. Armstrong Otter came to see me years ago, when he first moved to Pass-a-Grille. He knew Margaret before she married me. He wanted her back. But he had broken her heart. I found out what he’d done and I told him if he ever came around Margaret again, I’d kill him. So he waited until I was too weak to be a threat before he came back to hurt her. This is the next best thing. I’ve made a list of everything I have to leave to Margaret, and I’ve had Larry Davis create a trust for everything, including the life insurance. You are my trustee. Please look after it all. Don’t give the money to Margaret, because he’ll cheat her out of it and break her heart again.”
Ron finished the letter simply. “Thank you, Willa, for being such a good friend to us. I know I can count on you. Sincerely, Ron Wheaton.” The letter was dated two weeks before he died.
I put the letter to Margaret back into the box, along with the letter to me and the asset list. I knocked on the door and the guard came and returned the box to its place on the shelf, behind the little silver door. He gave me the key, which I put back in its envelope and returned to my purse. Then, I went on to my office, with much on my mind and no time to consider it.
I missed my journal. I needed to write down my chaotic thoughts. To set out the things I’d learned and the leaps of reasoning that had come to me. But, like the CJ, I, too, was a civil servant. There was no free time in my schedule today.
I took my troubled countenance into my courtroom and tried to focus on oral arguments I’d scheduled weeks before. I heard little and understood less. In my mind, Margaret and Ron Wheaton, CJ and Mariam Richardson, Gil and Sandra Kelley, and, finally, Armstrong Otter, elbowed each other around, fighting for my attention.
On the way home, I stopped off at Barnes & Noble on Dale Mabry Highway in South Tampa. I wanted to learn more about Paulding Farnham. From what I’d read in the U.S. v. Otter file, I felt certain there would be at least one biography of the man available in a good bookstore.
I made my way over to the information desk and spoke with Connie Brown, the community relations manager. Connie had helped me out with inquiries about other matters in the past. It only took her a few minutes to find a beautiful coffee table book full of color pictures containing a history of Farnham’s work.
With a cup of Starbucks coffee, I sat in the café and looked at the pictures in Paulding Farnham, Tiffany’s Lost Genius. The book described Farnham as “the pantheon of American jewelry design” and “the greatest native-born jewelry designer the United States has produced.”
Well, if Otter was planning to impersonate someone’s work, I supposed it made sense to choose a man of superior talent who was also surrounded by mystery. Farnham had left the public eye in 1908 and relatively little was known about him afterward. According to the legend, he left jewelry and silver for good when he left Tiffany’s. But he was relatively young at the time, as well as extremely talented. It was plausible that he’d continued his work.
Otter had done his homework well in choosing Paulding Farnham to impersonate because Farnham’s work was coveted by aficionados. I was beginning to see why so many presumably wealthy people were willing to believe Otter when he claimed the copies he sold them were originals.
The famous twenty-four karat, gold-and-enamel orchid brooches, first shown at the Paris Exposition of 1889, were particularly coveted. I’d seen no evidence that Otter had attempted to pass off copies of the orchid brooches, but he did copy and sell Farnham’s insect brooches, such as a cabochon beetle and a sapphire bee pin with ruby eyes.
When I looked down at my watch, I was alarmed to see I’d gotten so wrapped up in the beautiful pictures of Farnham’s creations that the time had flown by. I pitched my now empty coffee cup, bought the book, and headed home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 7:00 a.m.
February 24, 2001
SATURDAY MORNING OF THE Gasparilla Distance Classic was cold and clear. I dressed as warmly as I dared and headed downtown. The race started at Morgan and Cumberland Streets and finished at Brorein and Tampa Streets. I was running in the 15k race, and I hoped to place in the top three.
I’m not a racer normally, and I don’t take care of myself well enough to compete in serious races. I eat too much rich food, drink too much gin, and even the occasional smoking I do cuts down on my wind. Most good days, I run about an eight-to-nine minute mile. The Distance Classic isn’t age adjusted, so I’d have to run my best times and then some to win.
Despite the odds, I was motivated to win more than the other runners. I still believed in the little engine that could, mind over matter, visualization, and all that. I’ve always had high aspirations and a finely-honed capacity for self-delusion.
I wanted to win the full $20,000 donation for Young Mothers’ Second Chance. My mother had been a single mom for five years, from the time my biological father was killed while she was pregnant, until she’d married Jim Harper. She always told me how hard it had been to take care of a baby by herself.
I’d taken on the cause of single mothers several years ago, sat on the Second Chance board of directors, and raised money for the organization whenever I could to repay Mom. Not that she would approve of my motivation. Mothers do things for their children without thought of creating an interest-bearing receivable.
Even so, not being a mother myself was somewhat justified by my volunteer efforts to support single moms. Some of the young mothers we sponsored had been able to finish college and get good jobs. I’d been working with this organization for many years and this year’s race money would be the largest contribution I’d ever managed.
On the theory that we should run before the day’s temperatures rose above comfortable levels, the race was scheduled to take off at eight-fifteen. This was usually good planning, but this year, it was wishful thinking. Runners wore long pants, headbands and gloves on hands that held the warm water we were drinking as we waited for the gun, dancing around in the cold to keep our muscles warm. The 5k run was scheduled to begin immediately after ours and then the wheelchair race would roll. We were holding everyone up, but many of the 12,000 runners who had planned to come hadn’t arrived and the organizers wanted to wait for them until the last minute. The longer we waited, the colder I became.
Eventually, the organizers told us to line up, and the starting gun gave us our cue to run like hell for just under ten miles. I quickly found myself in the middle of the pack, gasping heavily and watching my jerky, visible breath in the chilly air. Everyone around me was younger by ten years or more, so I guess I was doing well for my age group, which was beginning to feel like the “over 90” crowd.
There were older runners in the pack, but they were in the back and would be content just to finish. Before we started, I had had the conceit to believe I could win. Not just my class, but overall. Nothin
g like young bodies in top form to remind me of the mileage my body had already traveled. Now I realized I’d be lucky if I didn’t die.
After about two miles, I began to get into the race and to warm up. I tried to put on a little speed and at least get nearer the front of the pack. The problem was that younger, faster runners were getting warmed up, too, and they stayed in front of me the whole way.
When I glanced to my left, I saw Sandra Kelley on the sidelines, cheering a young man who must have been one of the Kelley children. His resemblance to Gil Kelley was unmistakable; if he was about twenty years younger, they’d be twins. Which was curious in its own way, I remember thinking, since Sandra was more than twenty years younger than Gil. They had a three-generation family. And then I had to concentrate on the rest of the run.
Maybe the old girl still has it, but not enough of it. I managed to finish in the middle of the pack. I wasn’t last, but I was nowhere near first. The promoters gave me my participatory tee-shirt and congratulatory approval for the pledges I’d obtained from corporate sponsors if I finished the race. I found myself walking around near the finish line, panting hard, sweating profusely, unable to talk and breathe at the same time.
Why did I do all that training if it wasn’t going to make a bit of difference? Running alone and running in a race are not the same. Maybe it helps to think you can, but I’m here to tell you, positive thoughts alone cannot make you a fast runner.
Walking around with my head down, looking at the ground, trying to catch my breath and keep my legs from cramping, I didn’t see Sandra Kelley until I ran right into her and spilled most of the bottle of water I had in my hand all over her.
“I’m sorry, Sandra,” I said, as I tried ineffectually to brush the water off of the bulky fur coat she wore.
I snagged my hand on the sharp edge of the large, elaborate pin she had on the lapel. I stuck my hand in my mouth, trying to make it feel better, without success, thinking it more than a little ridiculous for her to be wearing a mink coat.