Spring Break Read online

  “Someone else hire Gracie?” Jolene snorted in disbelief. “You’re kidding. You’ve met her, haven’t you? Who’d hire Gracie?”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Jolene’s high-pitched laughter aggravated my headache. “You’re right. I would be surprised. I’d be downright flabbergasted.”

  The woman was so annoying, I could understand why Gracie had left. What I couldn’t understand was why she hadn’t either poisoned Jolene’s food or smothered her in her sleep before departing.

  “So what should I tell Gracie?”

  “Don’t tell her anything,” Jolene said with a hint of malice. “Let her sweat. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  I groped for a zinger, but my whiplashed brain refused to cooperate.

  “Bon voyage.”

  I consoled myself with thoughts of her $10,000 retainer and hung up.

  CHAPTER 14

  At the marina, Bill and I sat on the deck of the Ten-Ninety-Eight and watched the sun set over Caladesi Island, which had been named by the latest polls as number four of the nation’s Top Ten Beaches. The sky at the horizon was the color of tangerines and mango pulp, and the warm breeze carried the briny scent of the gulf and a hint of Coppertone.

  After a few sips of Bill’s homemade sangria, a seductive concoction of burgundy, brandy and sliced lemons, limes and oranges, I felt the knots in my muscles, byproducts of my tension-filled day, begin to loosen.

  Salmon steaks sizzled on the grill along with yellow squash, onions and fresh asparagus. A tossed salad of fresh spinach, dried cranberries and chopped walnuts waited in the tiny galley fridge.

  I lifted my glass to Bill in a toast and nodded toward the grill. “You’re the only person I know who makes eating healthy appealing.”

  “Police work has taken a toll on our bodies,” Bill said. “High stress, irregular hours with not enough sleep and too much fast food. Not to mention that we’re not getting any younger. By eating healthy, we’ll have a lot of years left to spend together.”

  His desire for a long married life touched me, but, as I’d done all my life, I hid my emotions behind a wisecrack. “Just don’t cut off my doughnuts. I’ll lose the will to live.”

  He grinned at my joke, one of the many things I loved about Malcolm.

  Fortified by a few more swallows of sangria, I told Bill about my interview with Stella Branigan, my visit with Mother, the damage to my Volvo and my run-in with a drunken preppy gunslinger.

  “The only good thing about the accident,” I said, “was crossing paths with Rudy Beaton.”

  “You miss the guys at Pelican Bay.”

  I nodded. “Sometimes I even miss Chief Shelton.”

  “Do you know what he’s doing now?”

  “Retired. I ran into him a few days ago. He says he plays golf every day. It’s either that or stay at home where Myra makes him clean and vacuum.”

  “So his airheaded wife’s a tyrant?”

  I smiled. “What goes around, comes around.”

  Bill filled my glass with more sangria, then turned the salmon on the grill.

  “Speaking of healthy eating and the Pelican Bay department,” I said, “did I ever tell you how Steve Johnson used to season his microwaved burritos with department-issue pepper spray?”

  Bill stared at me, his spatula suspended in midair. “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head. “And then he’d wonder why he had heartburn.”

  “Johnson never was particularly bright.” Bill settled back into his deck chair and picked up his glass. “Is he still working for Home Depot in Clearwater?”

  “Yep, in the paint section. Apparently they’ve learned to keep him away from sharp tools.”

  Over dinner on the deck, we discussed other former acquaintances and past experiences. Not until Bill had cleared the table and served coffee in thick mugs did we turn to business. By now, the sun had set and the crescent moon hung high in the sky. A scattering of brilliant stars were visible in spite of the ambient light from the marina.

  “How did your workmen’s comp case inquiry go today?” I asked.

  “The investigation was over almost before I started,” Bill said with a satisfied grin. “I went looking for a guy who supposedly injured his back lifting boxes of frozen chicken at the restaurant where he works. When I stopped at a convenience store to ask directions to his house, the clerk knew him. Told me this long story of how he was with the guy in his garage when he tried to winch the engine out of his Corvette and the chain slipped. The idiot grabbed at the chain to keep the engine from falling. Tore up his back something awful, the clerk said.”

  “Then decided to compound stupidity with fraud?”

  Bill nodded. “At least I can close that case out quickly. You and I have being keeping busier than I intended, but it’s hard to turn away clients before we’re established well.”

  I stared into my coffee cup.

  “Want to share what you’re thinking?” Bill asked.

  I shrugged. “What if I’ve got this Fisk/Branigan thing all wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I keep trying to make a connection, but maybe there isn’t one. What if Deirdre used the picture from the newspaper as an excuse to go pub crawling without her sister? She could have hooked up with the wrong guy in some sleazy bar and ended up dead. And her murder had nothing to do with our cold case.”

  “And Branigan?”

  “He was a politician, so he’d pissed off more people than you and I have ever met. Any one of them could have known where he lived, lain in wait for him in that arbor, and finished him off.”

  “Did you fax the cold-case DNA results to Doc?”

  I nodded. “But she’s backed up. Because it’s not an active case—hell, it’s not even in her jurisdiction—she has to put comparing it with Branigan’s DNA at the bottom of her list. It could be a week or more before we know anything. Same with Archer Phillips and his info search.” I laid my head along the back of the chair and studied the stars. “I’ve hit the wall in both investigations.”

  “Maybe you should consult a psychic.”

  I laughed. Bill knew I’d used that line to taunt my former chief whenever an investigation went dead in the water. Shelton had never risen to the bait, not because he didn’t believe in such nonsense but because it would have cost the department too much money.

  “I have a prediction.” Bill stood, set my mug aside and pulled me to my feet.

  “What does Swami Malcolm see in my future?”

  “You’re spending the night on a boat with a tall, dark man.”

  “Dark?”

  “Well, suntanned, at least. But just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there’s no fire in the furnace.”

  I couldn’t resist teasing him. “You know what else they say?”

  He tugged me closer. “What?”

  “That by thirty-five you get your head together and your body starts falling apart.”

  “I don’t feel a day over twenty,” he said with an irresistible grin, “and I’d guess that you’re just over eighteen.”

  “Why eighteen?”

  “Because that makes what I have in mind legal.”

  He kissed me then, and all thoughts of murders and cold cases disappeared.

  The next morning, Bill and I met with Adler at the Clearwater PD. Although it was Saturday, both he and Porter had come in early. With two active homicide investigations, they’d have no days off until they’d either solved the cases or reached dead ends.

  The office was an interior room with no windows, a dropped ceiling and bad fluorescent lighting. In those drab surroundings, the occupants were unaware of the glorious day outside filled with brilliant sunshine, warm breezes and wall-to-wall college kids.

  Just the thought of college kids made my head and neck ache, and I wondered if Richie the Gunslinger was still incarcerated in a nearby holding cell or if his bumper-car girlfriend had sprung for his bail.

 
; Adler, as always, was eating. His breakfast of choice, spread across the top of his desk, was an Egg McMuffin, a plate-sized cinnamon bun and coffee. Porter was sprinkling wheat germ into a carton of low-fat yogurt. They invited us to help ourselves to coffee from the pot in the break room. We took them up on the offer, then settled down to business.

  “We’ve turned up squat on Fisk’s killer,” Adler said between bites.

  “Maggie’s had some luck,” Bill said.

  “Great,” Porter drawled. “We could use a break.”

  “I don’t know how helpful it is.” I told them about the young hooker I’d interviewed in the park and gave them her description of the perp. “We’ve already eliminated the men in the Tribune photo, so there’s no evidence to tie Deirdre’s murder to Branigan’s.”

  “Got a theory?” Adler asked.

  I shrugged. “Just a shot in the dark. Maybe Deirdre wasn’t the shy, retiring woman her sister claims. After all, they’d lived in different states for years. What if Deirdre had a dark side—a result of her earlier molestation—that had her prowling bars, looking for Mr. Goodbar?”

  “And she found him?” Porter asked.

  “Who else would it be?” Bill said. “According to the witness, Deirdre recognized her assailant, even ran to meet him.”

  Adler frowned. “If that scenario pans out, we have a killer loose who might strike again. You think this hooker could come up with a full description?”

  I hesitated, filled with the irrational hope that the kid could clean up her act and avoid all contact with the police. But with lives at stake, I had no choice. “She works the park bench just west of where Deirdre’s body was found. Maybe she’ll be there tonight. But she said the guy was wearing a hat and sunglasses—”

  “So did the Unabomber,” Adler said.

  But the Unabomber sketch hadn’t been the key to his capture, I thought, but kept it to myself.

  “I’ll have a uniform pick her up tonight,” Adler said, “and put her with a sketch artist. Then we’ll canvass area bars with the description, even ask the local TV stations to air it.”

  Porter noisily scraped the last bit of yogurt from the cup with a plastic spoon, licked it and tossed the spoon and container into his wastebasket. “Which brings us to the Branigan case.”

  “We’re coming up empty there, too,” Adler said. “We checked out the guy in Safety Harbor who wrote threatening letters to Branigan after losing his job due to legislation Branigan sponsored—”

  “And the Hispanic day laborer,” Porter added, “the one who made threats because of Branigan’s lack of support for migrant workers.”

  “Both have rock-solid alibis,” Adler said.

  “What about the feminist in Belleair?” Bill asked.

  “Georgia Harding?” Adler rolled his eyes. “She’s something else. Wouldn’t even let us in the door. A real man-hater.” His expression brightened. “Maybe she’ll talk to you, Maggie.”

  I almost choked on my coffee. “Why me? Some of my best friends are men.”

  Bill looked thoughtful. “Adler’s right. You’ve succeeded in a male-dominated career. Maybe she’ll be more open to you.”

  “Okay,” I said, “why not? I can bill my time to Mrs. Branigan, since she’s hired me to investigate. I’ll check out Georgia Harding after the funeral this afternoon. Will you two be there?”

  Adler nodded. “We’ll attend the service at the church and the gathering afterward at the Branigan house.”

  “Watch out for Sidney and his wife,” I said. “There’s tension in that family.”

  Porter snorted. “There’s tension in every family. Especially after a death. Where there’s a will, there’s a relative.”

  “Who gets Branigan’s estate?” I asked.

  “What estate?” Adler had finished his sandwich and worked his way through half his cinnamon bun. “The wife has all the money. Branigan was financially dependent on her.”

  “So we can rule out greed as a motive,” Bill said.

  “And the wife as a suspect,” Porter said. “Both the cleaning woman and the butler place her in her room at the time of the murder.”

  “Two witnesses whose salaries she pays,” I observed.

  “You suggesting they were bribed?” Adler said.

  “Been known to happen,” I said.

  “But if she has all the money,” Bill said, “what’s her motive?”

  I thought of Archer Phillips and his secret love nest. “Could Branigan have had a little action going on the side? Some women are drawn to powerful men.”

  “As well as to jocks and rock stars,” Porter said with a sigh. “Life ain’t fair.”

  “If life was fair,” I said, “we’d all be out of a job.”

  “And if you had women throwing themselves at you,” Adler told Porter, “your wife would kill you.”

  “But what a way to go,” Porter shot back.

  Adler finished his bun and coffee and seemed to be looking around for something else to consume. “We already checked the cheating-husband angle with Branigan’s aides. They swear he was squeaky clean. He may have been interested in fooling around, but he was terrified his political enemies would find out—”

  “And use it against him?” I asked.

  Adler shook his head. “And tell his wife. Apparently Branigan had a healthy respect for Stella.”

  “And her bank accounts,” Porter added.

  Frustrated by lack of progress, I stood to leave. The only solid results of our investigation were the new hives that had risen on my arms. Bill promised we’d all meet to compare notes after the funeral and my interview with Georgia Harding and followed me out the door.

  CHAPTER 15

  Carlton Branigan’s memorial service was held at two o’clock at Peace Memorial Presbyterian Church in downtown Clearwater. The public service followed a private burial at Sylvan Abbey.

  Dwarfed by its neighbor, a former resort hotel that now served as World Headquarters for the Church of Scientology, pink-stuccoed Peace, like many historic Florida churches, had been built in a Spanish mission style. With heavy wooden doors, a roof of sunbaked clay tiles, seventy stained-glass windows, including two massive creations by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and a soaring belfry topped by an ornate wrought-iron cross, the sanctuary had been erected after World War I. William Jennings Bryan had spoken at its dedication to those who’d died in the Great War.

  Today the church was again filled with dignitaries, including the governor and his wife, whom ushers seated just before Stella, accompanied by Sidney and Angela, was escorted down the aisle to a front pew.

  Stella and Angela were attired in black designer dresses with stylish hats whose black, ribbon-edged veils obscured their faces. Sidney, wearing a shell-shocked expression and a navy-blue suit, sat between his wife and mother. Brianna was nowhere in sight. I would try to talk to her at her home while her parents were at the reception at Stella’s following the funeral.

  Bill and I slipped into a pew at the rear of the church, and I caught a glimpse of Adler and Porter seated opposite us across the center aisle. The sanctuary was packed with the powerful, the rich and the famous from around the city and the state, and, outside the church, cordons of uniformed officers, supplemented by sheriff’s deputies, held the media and the curious at bay. Unknown to the crowd, Adler had arranged for a CSU tech, disguised as a news photographer, to snap pictures of the attendees. If a malcontent voter had killed Branigan, his appearance at the funeral was a distinct possibility, and he might be spotted in the photos.

  Inside, the organist completed Samuel Barber’s Adagio, and the opening strains of a familiar hymn soared from the Casavant pipe organ. Everyone rose to sing, but Bill and I paid more attention to the congregation than to the elaborately choreographed service as we watched for anyone who looked suspicious or out of place.

  In addition to the minister’s homily, eulogies were delivered by everyone from the governor to the mayor. I kept expecting Sidney to pay some t
ribute to his father, but he remained at his mother’s side throughout the service. If I believed everything that was said about the late senator, he’d been a saint and a hero, incapable of any wrongdoing, much less molesting and murdering children.

  When the service ended, Bill and I hurried outside and conducted our own surveillance of the crowd. Many appeared to be college kids, caught in the traffic jam and making the most of an opportunity to see celebrities. Others, dressed in the military-style uniforms of the Church of Scientology, had obviously been trapped by the crush of people around the church. Several typical tourists, a few vagrants and possibly some folks who worked in nearby offices, gawked at the governor and other famous faces, but no one stood out as a potential suspect. Adler would study the photos taken by the crime-scene tech later and have a few run through face recognition software to search for matches with known criminals.

  Attendants from the funeral home scuttled the Branigan family out a side door into a waiting limousine that drove quickly away. Bill and I walked through an alley behind the church to the next street over where he’d parked his SUV.

  “That was an exercise in futility,” he complained.

  “Our job would be so much easier if someone had just gotten up, gone to the lectern and admitted, “I killed him and I’m glad.’”

  Bill unlocked the car doors and opened mine. “If Branigan was as great as everyone proclaimed, how come somebody strangled him?”

  “Obviously—” I fastened my seat belt “—we’re missing something. I found it interesting that Sidney didn’t speak at the service.”

  “Maybe he was afraid. Speaking in public is the number-two phobia, after all.”

  “And you know this how?” Bill continually amazed me with the factoids he could pull from thin air.

  “Discovery Channel.” He closed my door, circled the car and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “What’s the number-one phobia?” I asked.

  “Fear of spiders. And did you know that one in ten people experience a phobia at sometime in their lives?” He started the engine, checked the lane behind him and pulled away from the curb.