Storm Season

  Charlotte Douglas

  STORM SEASON

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  Violet Lassiter passed me the heavy blue-willow plate with a remarkably steady hand for a one-hundred-year-old. “Have a cookie, Miss Skerritt.”

  She didn’t have to twist my arm. Fresh from the oven, the cookies smelled heavenly.

  “They’re better with nuts,” she added in apology, “but Bessie can’t have ’em, so the rest of us have to suffer.”

  “You eat too many sweets, anyway,” her eighty-four-year-old sibling, Bessie, countered.

  “What do you think—” Violet accused her with a roll of her eyes “—that I’m going to shorten my life?”

  Taking a cookie, I sat on the screened back porch of the modest cement-block home with the two elderly women, who were apparently unfazed by the ninety-degree heat and suffocating humidity of the September morning. Violet, tall and gangly with thick white braids wrapped around her head like a crown, wore a heavy sweater over her cotton housedress. Bessie, short and lean, was also dressed in a cotton shift and a cardigan, plus bright-pink sneakers and heavy flesh-toned nylons rolled just below her knees.

  I’d first encountered the Lassiter sisters last June when Bill Malcolm, my fiancé and partner in Pelican Bay Investigations, had done background checks on volunteers for the local historical society. To his dismay, he’d discovered that Bessie had an arrest record for shoplifting. Further digging revealed she’d been stealing food for Violet after their Social Security money had run out before the end of the month. The judge had given Bessie probation, but his lenient ruling hadn’t solved the elderly women’s subsistence problem.

  Bill and I had arranged for meals-on-wheels for the pair and had put together a gift basket to tide them over until deliveries began. To save the Lassiters’ pride, we’d fabricated a story that Bessie had won the basket in a grand opening raffle we’d held at our business. We’d presented them the basket of staples and goodies, along with our business card and instructions to call on us if they needed a private investigator, a request we never expected to receive.

  Their call came yesterday.

  I’d solved many cases during my twenty-three years as a cop and more recently for Pelican Bay Investigations, but I couldn’t guess what dilemma had prompted these elderly sisters to contact me. And I couldn’t get them to stop sniping at one another long enough to find out.

  “Get Miss Skerritt more ice,” Violet ordered her sister in a drill-sergeant tone. “Her tea’s getting warm.”

  “Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you can boss me around,” Bessie shot back.

  “My tea is fine, really,” I said. “Now what—”

  “You need to be bossed,” Violet said, ignoring me, “because you act like a child. I hope I live long enough to see you grow up.”

  “Ladies.” I spoke loudly and firmly. The situation was spiraling out of control, sweat was soaking through the back of my blouse and all I could think of was how great air-conditioning would feel about now. “Why exactly did you want to see me?”

  “We have a man,” Bessie announced with a gleeful expression.

  I nodded but didn’t comment, not sure where this was going.

  “A tenant,” Violet corrected.

  “But he’s not a paying tenant,” Bessie added. “More like a guest.”

  I gazed into the tiny house through the open back door but couldn’t spot anyone inside, and I was beginning to wonder if this mysterious tenant wasn’t senility’s equivalent of an imaginary friend.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “Over there.” Bessie pointed to a toolshed at the rear of the yard that backed up to the Pinellas Trail, a linear park built on an old railroad bed that ran the length of the county.

  I narrowed my eyes, but the shed door was shut, and I caught no flicker of movement inside. With the windows closed and the Florida sun beating on the roof, the interior temperature had to be over a hundred degrees. If their “guest” was in there, he was well done by now.

  “Oh…kay,” I said, not wanting to call her crazy to her face.

  “He’s not there now, Bessie.” Violet’s condescending older sister voice reminded me of my own sibling, Caroline. “He’s gone out.”

  “You have a man living in your garden shed?” I felt like Alice who’d tumbled down the rabbit hole.

  Bessie nodded.

  “What’s his name?” The investigator in me couldn’t help asking, while the saner part of my nature chided me for encouraging their delusions.

  “He doesn’t have a name,” Violet said, “so we call him J.D.”

  Curiouser and curiouser. The ladies had obviously lost it.

  “J.D. for John Doe,” Bessie said. “He’s a lovely man.”

  “Who doesn’t have a name.” An incipient ache flared behind my eyes.

  “Well, he had a name at one time—” Violet began.

  “—but he can’t remember it,” Bessie finished. “Can’t remember anything. Who he is, where he came from, not even his age, although I’d put him in his early sixties, if I had to guess.” She chomped the last bite of her third cookie, sans nuts.

  “He has the nicest manners,” Violet said, “or we wouldn’t tolerate him. Why, for the longest time, we didn’t even know he was there.”

  “We wouldn’t have known at all,” Bessie agreed, “if it hadn’t been for the Turk’s Cap bush.”

  Violet nodded.

  I was beginning to wonder if I were the one losing it. Nothing either of them said made any sense.

  “That bush grew so high during the summer rains,” Bessie explained, “that it blocked the view from my bedroom window. So I went to the shed for the clippers.”

  “We don’t use the shed much any longer,” Violet said, “since that nice young neighbor—”

  “Mr. Moore,” Bessie said.

  “Don’t interrupt,” her sister snapped.

  “But you’d forgotten his name.”

  “I didn’t forget. I hadn’t gotten to it yet.”

  “So you don’t use the shed…” I prompted Violet in hopes of ending the bickering.

  Bessie answered. “Mr. Moore mows our grass when he does his yard. He’s very thoughtful.”

  “Thoughtful, my eye,” Violet said. “He got sick of looking at the jungle over here.”

  While Bessie searched for a suitable comeback, I plunged into the void. “What did you find in the shed, Bessie?”

  “Come and see for yourself.”

  I set aside my glass of tea, pushed to my feet from the ancient metal glider and followed Bessie out the screen door. Violet, amazingly agile for a centenarian, dogged our steps as if afraid she’d miss something.

  We followed a path of popcorn stone, set in thick St. Augustine grass, to the shed, constructed of the same concrete block as the house and apparently built at the same time, around 1940. The wooden door showed signs of rot, and several asphalt shingles were missing from the roof. A square of cardboard replaced a missing pane in one of two sash windows visible on the side of th
e shed that faced the house.

  Bessie knocked on the door. “J.D., you home?”

  When no one answered, she tugged open the warped door, reached inside and flipped a switch. Light from the bare bulb, which extended from a cord in the center of the ceiling, illuminated the opposite of what I’d expected.

  Instead of a jumble of old tools, broken pots and other junk covered in dust and spiderwebs, the space was immaculate. The concrete floor had been recently swept, every surface dusted, the windowpanes sparkled in the sun and tools and garden implements hung in an orderly array on makeshift wall pegs. On an ancient wooden workbench in front of the east window sat rows of healthy green herbs in small pots. Next to the herbs were a single-burner electric hot plate, a battered but clean saucepan and a few cans of beans and franks. Beneath the bench stood a jug of drinking water and an old but sturdy Igloo cooler.

  On the opposite side of the shed, under the west windows, a rough bed frame had been constructed from scraps of plywood and old lumber. Several ragged and faded blankets, neatly folded, lay beside a stained pillow. On a peg above the bed hung a heavy army jacket.

  Either the Lassiter sisters had staged an elaborate set for their delusion, or the mysterious J.D. wasn’t a figment of their imagination but real flesh and blood.

  My concern for the frail and elderly ladies skyrocketed. “Have you called the sheriff’s office?”

  “Oh, no,” Bessie said in a horrified tone.

  “We wanted to,” Violet said, “but police make J.D. nervous, poor man.”

  “So you want me to evict him?” I thought I’d finally gotten a handle on why the sisters had summoned me.

  “Evict him?” Bessie’s eyes widened with alarm. “Of course not. That would be inhospitable.”

  “We want you to find out who he is,” Violet explained in the same exasperated voice she used on her sister. “He’s such a dear man, we’re sure he has a family somewhere who love him and miss him. In the meantime, we’re happy to have him stay with us.”

  “We even offered to share our meals,” Bessie added, “but he didn’t want to impose.”

  “How does he support himself?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t beg, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Violet said sharply.

  The old lady was quick. That J.D. was a panhandler, at best, was exactly what I’d been thinking.

  “He’s too proud,” Bessie said. “He’d never take charity. He insists on doing odd jobs around our house to pay his rent. He stopped our faucet from dripping, planed a closet door that always stuck and mended a window screen. He also trims the shrubbery and weeds the flower beds. And as soon as we can afford a new pane, he’s going to repair the shed window.”

  “He has an old bicycle,” Violet added. “He rides around town and collects aluminum cans. Then he takes them to the recycling center and sells them.”

  “I’m sure J.D. is very…nice.” I was trying to be tactful. “But are you sure he’s not dangerous?”

  Violet drew herself to her full height, very imposing since it included six inches of braided coronet.

  “Young lady, I didn’t get to be a hundred years old without learning a few things. I am an excellent judge of character. J.D. may have forgotten who he is, but he hasn’t forgotten what he is.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “A kind and gentle man who’s temporarily lost his way,” Violet said. “We asked you here to help him find it.”

  “Will you?” Bessie asked. “As much as we like having J.D., we do want him to find his family.”

  Faced with the Lassiters’ sincere concern, I didn’t have the heart to tell them that J.D. was most likely one of a vast army of homeless, many of whom, due to mental illness, had chosen life on the streets rather than deal with the strains and stresses of a normal life. I only hoped he wasn’t also the type who suffered bouts of violence because he wasn’t on medication.

  “I’ll have to meet J.D. and talk with him,” I said. “Then I’ll see what I can do. Can you call me when he’s here?”

  Bessie looked embarrassed.

  Violet squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “We had the phone taken out. Never used it, except to answer calls from telemarketers.”

  I knew better. The Lassiters’ fixed income hadn’t stretched to include the monthly phone bill.

  “Maybe your neighbor, Mr. Moore, will call me?” I suggested.

  “That’s a good idea,” Bessie said. “He’s already volunteered to call 9-1-1 if we ever need help. I’m sure he won’t mind calling you.”

  I said goodbye, hurried to my ancient Volvo and cranked up the air-conditioning. I hoped J.D. returned soon, so I could meet him and decide whether to call the police, despite the sisters’ objections, for their own safety.

  As I drove away, I knew I wouldn’t bill them for my time. As Bill always said, pro bono work was good for the soul.

  Especially if it kept two lively old ladies out of harm’s way.

  CHAPTER 2

  Darcy Wilkins, our receptionist and secretary, greeted me with a distracted wave when I returned to the office. She was eating lunch at her desk and watching the noon news on the small television in the waiting area. Roger, my three-year-old pug, showed more enthusiasm at my arrival and followed me toward my office.

  “Look,” Darcy said around a mouthful of yogurt, pointing to the TV with her spoon, “there’s Adler.”

  Dave Adler had been my partner during my final months with the Pelican Bay Police Department. When the city had disbanded the PD and the sheriff’s office had taken over, Adler had gone to work as a detective with the Clearwater Department.

  I stopped midstride, pivoted and almost tripped over Roger in my haste to view the screen. Young enough to be my son, but already a stellar detective, Adler always evoked a certain maternal pride. Gazing at the screen where the Clearwater PD spokesperson was being interviewed, I could see Adler and his current partner, Ralph Porter, in the background, carrying evidence bags to their car, just as the news segment ended.

  “Did you hear what was going on?” I asked Darcy.

  “Murder on Sand Key. Some woman was shot when she got out of her car inside the gated lot at her condo.”

  My skin prickled at her words. But this homicide was Adler’s problem, not mine, so the hives that usually erupted at the mention of murder remained dormant.

  “It’s too soon for the police to announce the victim’s identity,” I said. “Not until next of kin are notified.”

  Darcy scraped the bottom of her yogurt cup with her plastic spoon, gave the drooling Roger a lick and tossed the spoon and container into the trash. “No motive yet, either.”

  “Anyone see the shooter?”

  “Not according to the newscast.”

  At one time, the killing would have led the news in Tampa Bay. But with growth in population had come a corresponding increase in crime. Murders were commonplace, and the report of this homicide had been delayed until right before the weather.

  I glanced toward Bill’s office and spotted his empty desk through the open door. I hadn’t talked with him since the previous evening. “Any word from Bill?”

  Darcy nodded. “He called right after you left for the Lassiters. Said he wouldn’t be in this morning and asked that you meet him at the boat at three this afternoon.”

  When we’d parted last night, Bill had said he’d see me at the office this morning, so apparently something had come up. “Did he say where he was?”

  Darcy shook her head.

  “What he was doing?”

  She shrugged. “He seemed distracted, in a hurry. That’s all I know. I’m just the hired help. Nobody tells me anything.”

  I suppressed a smile. We usually didn’t have to tell Darcy what was going on. She had the uncanny ability to hear whatever happened in the office, even behind closed doors.

  “Any other calls?” I asked.

  “No. It’s been like the quiet before the storm.”

&
nbsp; “Bite your tongue. That’s a word I don’t want to hear until December.” The first day of that month would mark the end of hurricane season.

  I took a seat on the chair nearest Darcy’s desk, faced the television and waited for the weather forecast. Early September is the peak of hurricane season, and for residents of Florida, that meant all eyes were on the tropics, and chief meteorologists Paul Dellegatto of FOX 13 and Steve Jerve of Channel 8 had become our best friends and constant companions.

  So far this season, South Florida and the panhandle had been hit hard. Tampa Bay residents were holding their collective breath, wondering if this would be the year of the Big One, when a storm the equivalent of Ivan or Katrina would wreak havoc on an area that had been spared destruction since 1921.

  Bill and I always remained alert to the changing weather. Living aboard his cabin cruiser at the Pelican Bay Marina, Bill needed plenty of lead time to secure his boat before evacuating. And my waterfront condo was in a mandatory evacuation zone. Before the multiple hits Florida took in 2004, I’d been more casual about leaving when a storm was forecast. But after viewing pictures of houses near the water that Ivan and Katrina had obliterated, except for the concrete slab foundations, I’d developed a healthier respect for the storms’ potential for damage. Every June when hurricane season began, I packed a large plastic bin with important papers, canned goods, bottled water, battery-powered lanterns, a first aid kit and kibble for Roger and stored it in the hall closet, ready to set in the car and evacuate at a moment’s notice.

  On the little TV, the commercial ended and the weather forecast began.

  “Damn,” I said.

  The icon for a tropical storm had popped up on the weather map south of Jamaica in the Caribbean. The cone of probability for Tropical Storm Harriet stretched five days out and indicated the storm would strengthen in intensity and, pushed by upper air currents, a shifting jet stream and meandering Bermuda High, curve back toward Florida. For now, the state’s west coast, from the Dry Tortugas all the way to Cedar Key, was on alert.