Pelican Bay Page 5

  “You think he’s a suspect? What’s his motive?” Adler scribbled in his notebook, then tucked it in the back pocket of his fitted jeans.

  “Sexual harassment, malpractice, blackmail. The possibilities are endless. And until we rule someone out, everybody’s a suspect.”

  After Adler left, I refueled on coffee and started making notes. I quickly polished off the list of known facts and began a list of what I needed to know. Just writing down the questions took a long time.

  Sunday morning, the mockingbirds were singing among the blossoms of the golden rain tree beside my front door when I arrived home. I’d spent all night at the station, reviewing my notes until I’d fallen asleep at my desk.

  Sunlight poured through the door into the foyer as I entered, illuminating the framed memorabilia hanging there. Most days I passed the grouping without seeing it, but today the tug of memory drew me to it.

  A handsome young doctor with smiling eyes occupied the center frame. To the left was a picture of the same young man and a much younger me in a powder-blue evening dress, taken at our engagement party at the Pelican Bay Yacht Club. To the right hung a now-yellowed copy of a news article, recounting the tragic murder of Gregory James Singleford, my fiancé.

  There were pictures of my parents and my sister, my diploma in library science from the University of South Florida, my certificate of graduation from the police academy, and a framed newspaper clipping of Bill and me in uniform, taken the day after I saved his life. The most recent photo captured me with Bill on the deck of the Ten-Ninety-Eight.

  I reached up and touched Greg’s photo. He’d been killed shortly after that photo was taken. Working in the ER during his residency, he’d been mowed down by a crackhead with a Saturday-night special. I went through the denial stage of grief, refusing to believe he was dead until the day of his funeral. In the anger stage of grieving, I quit my job at the public library and enrolled in the police academy. I couldn’t see spending my life safely and securely among books after the only man I’d ever loved had died so violently in a crime-filled world. Angry and idealistic, I had pursued my new goal with a vengeance. Only my fury over his senseless death had enabled me to survive the harassment, prejudice and the torture of physical training I’d encountered at the academy.

  By the time I’d graduated, my anger had dissipated, replaced by a steady determination to prove my detractors wrong. I was going to be the best damned cop the Suncoast had ever seen—or die trying.

  A decade later, the sudden death of my father from a stroke devastated me. I vowed then never again to set myself up for the heartbreak losing Greg and Daddy had caused. Burying myself in work was my prescription against emotional pain.

  The ringing of the telephone intruded on my memories. I closed the front door, plunging my memory wall into darkness, and went into the kitchen to answer the phone.

  The voice of Kyle Dayton, the day-shift dispatcher, greeted me. “You left too soon, Maggie. We got another dead one.”

  My stomach tightened. “When?”

  “Call just came in from the paramedics. They say it looks suspicious.”

  “Do you have an ID?”

  “Sophia Morelli, at her home at 1846 Santa Lucia Drive.”

  “Contact Adler and have him meet me there. I’m on my way.”

  I put down the phone. Morelli. Santa Lucia. I pulled from my jacket the list of names I’d copied from Edith’s address book. Sophia Morelli was fourth on the list. Sophia Morelli on Santa Lucia Drive was also on the client list Karen Englewood had given me—a list with the names of seven people, two of whom were now dead.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was not a good day to die.

  The nip in the salt-laden air of the season’s first cold front stung my face through the open car window, and the sun shimmered in a cloudless sky. I contemplated never breathing such air or viewing such a sky again and suffered a sense of loss for Sophia Morelli, a woman I’d never met.

  I turned off the highway and worked my way through a neighborhood of moderate, cinder-block homes with manicured lawns, inhabited mostly by retirees on fixed incomes, before reaching the impressive stuccoed pillars and ornate wrought-iron entrance to Pelican Point.

  The heavy gates, usually closed, requiring residents to insert key cards for access, gaped wide. At the far end of the long, curving street, emergency lights of an ambulance and patrol car flashed in front of a house on the Gulf side.

  Santa Lucia ran the length of Pelican Point, a wide spit of high-priced sand protruding into the Gulf of Mexico on the north side of town. The locals called it Millionaires’ Row because of its lavish, custom-built homes.

  The intimidating mansions’ flood-prone first stories of garages and storage rooms artfully concealed by architecture and profuse landscaping, rose twelve feet above sea level. Living quarters towered three and four stories above the street. I scanned the houses as I headed toward 1846. Money didn’t guarantee taste. Styles ranged from art deco and gaudy Victorian to Key West and a bizarre mix of Byzantine and Gothic.

  During the dog days of August, I’d paid a call to the Mediterranean-style mansion with arched cloisters and red-tiled roof. The rich might be different, but a few still beat their wives senseless when the urge hit them. The intimidated wives, who pressed charges only on Visa Platinum and American Express, refused to file complaints against their abusive husbands. Most were too scared. Others feared killing, or at least incarcerating, the goose that laid the golden eggs.

  The Morelli house with lines and angles in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright was distinguished from others on the street by its wide Gulf-front yard. While the other structures crowded shoulder to shoulder on minimum setbacks, the Morelli mansion was centered on three lots that sold for half a million each. A tennis court filled the south yard, and terraced patios, bordered with hibiscus and ginger lilies, formed a buffer from the neighbors on the north.

  Vehicles crowded the cul-de-sac at the peninsula’s end, where paramedics loaded equipment as I parked. A few neighbors, gathered in a discreet group on the front lawn across the street, watched and murmured among themselves.

  I met Joe Fenton coming out as I headed up the walk. The short, stocky paramedic yanked off his latex gloves and stroked a mustache that crouched on his upper lip like a dead caterpillar.

  “Doc Cline’s on the way,” he said.

  I jerked my head toward the house. “Anyone else home?”

  “The husband. He’s pretty shook up. Adler’s with him.”

  I climbed the sloping walk to the second-floor entry. Wide double doors, inset with beveled glass etched with sea oats, stood open to a marble foyer. I followed the sound of voices, turned right and stepped down into a spacious living room with chalk-white Berber carpeting, ivory pickled woods and snowy upholstered furniture, whose cushions appeared never to have known a derriere. With its sliding glass walls stacked out of sight, the room opened onto the broad expanse of the Gulf of Mexico to the west and north.

  At the room’s far edge, a tall man slumped in a chair, elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. His dark hair and tanned arms and legs contrasted with his tennis whites and the room’s furnishings. Adler’s faded jeans and striped red-and-navy rugby shirt assured me I hadn’t lost the ability to see colors.

  The husband didn’t look up when I entered. Adler pointed toward the foyer and moved to meet me there. “He’s the only one in the house.”

  “What happened?”

  “Lester Morelli said he was finishing an early breakfast. He has a doubles match with friends every Sunday at nine. Says his wife usually sleeps in until he’s gone, but she was up early today.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  “The kitchen.” Adler led the way through a door opposite the living room.

  I followed, skirting a dining table large enough to accommodate twenty. We passed through a butler’s pantry and entered a large kitchen overlooking the water. Appliances, ceramic-tile floors and European
-style cabinets gleamed stark white.

  The victim lay facedown, sprawled across the tile between the kitchen and the large bay window of the breakfast nook. Thick black hair obscured her face. She wore a short nightgown of sheer white cotton that had bunched around her thighs when she fell.

  But she wasn’t fat. Maybe fifteen pounds overweight, but not obese, as Edith had been.

  “What do these people have against color?” The sterile white environment was getting on my nerves, already irritated by two suspicious deaths in three days.

  I surveyed the room, taking in an overturned cup on the breakfast table and coffee staining the place mat and puddling on the bleached oak surface. On the counter beside the sink stood three plastic pill bottles, a blender, an unopened envelope of powdered diet drink and a glass, half full of what looked like water.

  I turned to Adler. “Has the husband said anything else?”

  “His wife came down to have breakfast with him. According to Morelli, she was all bubbly and smiling. Until she took her vitamins. Then she grabbed her throat, turned red in the face and collapsed.”

  I leaned down to examine the pill bottles without touching them. Multivitamin, magnesium and potassium supplements. I’d seen the same containers in Edith’s kitchen, but Mick had tested them and found only the contents listed on the labels.

  “What then?” I said.

  Adler consulted his notes. “Morelli dialed 911, but by the time the paramedics came, she was gone.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Her husband said she has a history of heart trouble. The paramedics called Doc Cline’s beeper.”

  I shuddered. The all-white atmosphere of the house mimicked a Hollywood director’s version of heaven, right down to the sheer milky drapery blowing in the morning breeze. Now Sophia had abandoned her stage set for the real thing. “Morelli tell you anything else?”

  Adler shook his head. “The guy’s shaking like a palm in a hurricane, and he’s white as a sheet.”

  “At least he matches the decor.”

  I crossed to a doorway that opened out onto a balcony encircling the back of the house. A boardwalk connected the St. Augustine lawn to sand dunes anchored with sea oats and crossed to a broad beach of white-sugar sand. Unless the Morellis buttoned up the house at night and turned on a security system, anyone with a boat would have access to the property and the house.

  “See that no one,” I said, “disturbs anything until Doris arrives. Then glean what you can from the neighbors. I’ll see what else Morelli can tell us.”

  I went back into the living room to confront the grieving husband. The house bothered me. Its antiseptic living room looked like something from the pages of House Beautiful, without the tastefully arranged personal clutter usually featured in such layouts. A gigantic black-and-white photograph of sand dunes and cabbage palms, hanging above the white marble mantelpiece, was the focal point of the colorless room. Only a wedding picture, framed in silver on an end table, indicated real people had inhabited the place. A plump, dark-haired bride with attractive Mediterranean features and a radiant smile clutched the tuxedoed arm of a young groom with a handsome Latin face. Her form-fitting gown accentuated every curve, more than two hundred pounds’ worth.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Morelli.” I took a chair across from the man, who still sat with his face in his hands.

  He lifted his head and stared at me, his bedroom eyes a deep caramel color with slightly drooping lids. He was more handsome than his wedding picture, with a strong, chiseled jaw and even white teeth; the only detraction from his looks were their perfection, as in too-good-to-be-true. And the pain in his eyes.

  “And you are?” Irritation edged the sadness in his voice.

  “Detective Skerritt.”

  “Detective? Do you always investigate heart attacks?” His hands shook until he clasped them firmly together. He studied his white knuckles for a moment, then moved his hands to the arms of the chair, where his fingers plucked at the loosely woven fabric.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but while we wait for the medical examiner to verify cause of death, I must ask some questions. They’re just routine.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can, but I’m not thinking too clearly right now.” His glance traveled toward a door that connected the kitchen with the living room.

  Heels tapping on marble sounded in the foyer, and I heard Adler direct Doris Cline toward the kitchen.

  “Your wife’s name?” I said.

  “Sophia Gianakis Morelli.” His voice cracked on a sob.

  “Gianakis? George’s daughter?”

  George Gianakis’s father had founded Sophia’s restaurant and resort on the waterfront. And George had made millions in real estate and development before his death. Sophia had inherited it all. I thanked my mother’s endless accounts of Pelican Bay’s elite social scene for that bit of information.

  Morelli nodded. “You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you? I gave them up a month ago, but now…Jesus.” He combed his fingers through thick dark hair untouched by gray, then returned to tugging the threads of the chair arms.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I never picked up the habit. How old was your wife?”

  “Thirty-nine.” A ghost of a smile flickered across his ravaged features. “Really.”

  Either Morelli hit the Grecian Formula often or was much younger than Sophia. “And you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Just routine, for identification.”

  “Thirty-one.”

  “Any children?”

  “No.” He exhaled a deep, shuddering sigh. “When we were first married five years ago, Sophia’s health was so poor, her doctor advised against pregnancy.”

  No children. Whoever Sophia’s beneficiaries were, they stood to gain millions. “Because of her heart?”

  “That, high blood pressure and diabetes, all complicated by her weight.”

  “So you were expecting something like this?”

  “Hell, no.” He sprang to his feet with the grace of an athlete and turned away, staring out over the water. “For the past two years, her health had improved. She lost a ton of weight and brought her diabetes and blood pressure under control. We were beginning to talk about having a family, adopting if the strain of pregnancy still proved too dangerous.”

  Emotion made his last words almost indistinguishable, and his shoulders shook.

  My heart told me to leave the poor guy to his grief, but my head had work to do. My fatigue had returned. Too many victims, too much pain, and me with an orchestra seat to it all. Maybe Bill was right. I should take that library job. In books there were more happy endings.

  “What happened this morning?” I said.

  His muscles tensed. “I already told the other one.”

  I stifled my sympathy. “Tell it again.”

  He turned to face me and jammed his fists in the pockets of his tennis shorts. “I was finishing breakfast. I always play tennis early on Sunday mornings, and Sophia sleeps late. Today she surprised me by coming down early.”

  “Did she seem ill or mention feeling bad?”

  He shook his head. “She said the day was too gorgeous to waste in bed. She kissed me good morning, then went to the sink and took her vitamins.”

  “The ones on the counter?”

  “Yeah. As soon as she swallowed them, her face flushed and she grabbed her throat. She couldn’t talk. I thought she’d choked, so I tried the Heimlich maneuver. She passed out, and I laid her down to call for help.”

  A tear ran down the sharp angle of his cheek, and he bit his lower lip in an obvious effort to regain control. All his good looks and money couldn’t erase the fact that his wife lay dead on the kitchen floor.

  “That’s all for now,” I said. “Is there someone I can call to stay with you?”

  “Ted Trask, next door.” His voice trembled. “We were supposed to play tennis this morning.”

  I left him and went to th
e kitchen, where I found Doris Cline, dressed for church in a red silk suit.

  “You’d better call CSU,” Doris said. “You’ve got another poisoning on your hands.”

  I welcomed the pale greens and blues of my condo after the colorless atmosphere of the Morelli house. Bill called my decor tourist-class-Florida-hotel, but the pastels, the natural rattan-and-wicker furniture and framed beachscapes provided a soothing counterpoint to my rough-and-dirty job.

  I undressed and stood in the shower and let the pulsing water beat against my aching muscles while I tried to sort out the morning’s events.

  Doris Cline’s announcement had come as no surprise.

  “It wasn’t her heart?” I’d asked.

  “Her bum ticker could have been a factor, but I doubt it. The signs are the same as Wainwright’s, and Edith’s autopsy confirmed cyanide poisoning.”

  “Any other signs of trauma?”

  “Nothing overt,” Doris said. “I’ll know more after the autopsy.”

  In the Morelli kitchen, seagulls screamed outside the windows. I felt like screaming myself. I knew the criminal mind, but I’d never understood it. How could anyone justify taking another’s life? I resisted the urge to smash something. On my salary, I couldn’t afford to replace anything in this upscale house.

  “What do you know about Dr. Richard Tillett?” I asked Doris.

  “He’s well respected in the medical community. Why?”

  “I have a list, a support group of seven patients at his weight-loss clinic. Two on that list are now dead. Murdered.”

  Doris smoothed her jacket over trim hips and picked up her bag. “A serial killer?”

  “Or product-tampering.” The beginning of a headache blossomed behind my eyes. “Remember the Tylenol murders? Just because we didn’t find poison in Wainwright’s remaining vitamins doesn’t mean it wasn’t there to begin with. This one took vitamins just before she died.”

  Doris threw me a sympathetic smile. “Better contact the FDA so they can alert the manufacturers to issue recalls. I’ll have a report for you by the end of the day.”