Death by Marriage (5 page)

“Knows his way around
a boat better than most?” the C
hief suggested. I agreed. “Under the circumstances, do you think him capable of keeping his head and holding the boat steady?”

There was no other answer but yes. Jeb Brannigan didn’t startle easily. As much as I disliked him as a person, at the helm he was steady as a rock. “He’s not my favorite person, but he’s one of the best captains around. Runs a charter fishing service as well as Sea Rescue.”

Boone raised one blond eyebrow. “Any mysterious trips? There must be some reason you don’t like him,” the
C
hief added with an apologetic shrug that didn’t fool me for one minute. Boone Talbot was a pretty polished fisherman for someone who grew up in landlocked Nebraska. “He doesn’t smuggle,” I shot back, surprised to find mysel
f defending my old high school n
emesis. “Not drugs, not people. If he did, believe me, I’d have heard about it. If we discount the snowbirds and the year-round retirees, this is still a pretty small town.”

Chief Talbot just looked at me, his gaze unwavering. Expectant.

“Jeb does his best to beat Scott to an emergency,” I conceded. “He added Sea Rescue during a slow season only two years ago.”

The
C
hief was still waiting, his rather nice mouth and fine eyes quirked askance. “Okay, so Jeb’s an octopus,” I admitted. “He’s made a few moves I had to put down, and not just in high school.”

“Umm.” The fingers of the
C
hief’s right hand drummed against the table. There I was, the poor little costume designer, skewered like a butterfly on a pin. He leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the small table, the gold-fringed white satin square covering Crystal’s ball the only barrier between us. “Do you know Vanessa Kellerman?”

“I’ve never met her.”

He ran a long index finger over the white satin. “Heard any rumors?”

“Not until this morning.” Again, he waited, his silence drawing words from me as easily as I drew thread from a spool.

The rants of my two earlier customers were too ephemeral to bear repeating, but Deb Ellis’s remarks might have held a crumb of truth. “The mayor’s wife,” I said, “seems to think Mrs. Kellerman was seeing Jeb Brannigan on the side. To be honest, it doesn’t sound right. For all he’s a hunk, I can’t see Vanessa Kellerman interested in Jeb for anything more than his boating skills.”

“Some women are into slumming. And major abs.”

“Jeb may be a redneck, but if the rumor’s true, he’s the one who’d be slumming.” I wanted to think the
mee-ow
I heard came from Artemis, but I’m afraid it was my conscience calling. No doubt about it, I should stick to costume design and leave criminal analysis and ethics to others.

If only I’d listened to my own advice.

Chapter 4

“Gwyn?”

Oops. I’d been standing at the front door, mesmerized by the sight of Boone Talbot climbing into a perfectly ordinary dark blue Taurus, reversing, and driving up the slight slope to the Bypass. Five years celibate, and I’d been struck by lightning. A freaky out-of-the-blue bolt that had fried my common sense like an egg on a Florida summer sidewalk. I hadn’t felt this stunned since I first saw Chad Yarnell in swim trunks when I was eleven.
Dear Lord, what was wrong with me? Martin’s death seemed to have cracked the wall I’d put around my emotions, letting newly aroused interest and childhood memories flood my mind in a mix that was almost painful.

Little Gypsy Laura Wallace gazing in awe from afar as the prince of Golden Beach captained the football team, broke home run and swim records, and still managed a 3.8 average. Cow-eyed and worshipful, I’d embarrassed myself through age twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . . and beyond.

Futile then, futile now. Through all those years of hero worship, Chad—a lofty three years older than I—had occasionally rewarded my devotion with a wink and a pat on the head. I doubt he ever knew my name. He’d gone off to college and been swallowed up by some kind of government service long before I’d finished my stint at Rhode Island School of Design and dashed off to the big city to what I knew was going to be a meteoric career. Bye-bye, Laura Wallace, Nerd. Hello, Gwyn Halliday, Designer Extraordinaire.

Now here I was, with my nose pressed to the glass of my little costume shop, sighing over six feet of cornpone cop from Nebraska. Obviously, my biological clock was trying to tell me something. But, believe me, there isn’t anything on that subject my mother hasn’t already said.
Time to stop this nonsense, Gwyn. Get a life before you wither on the vine. Date! Or whatever they call it now. Trust somebody.  There’s nothing like a husband and children . .
.

Never mind that the grandchildren wouldn’t be blood relatives. I had to give Mom credit. Never had she treated me any differently from Scott. I was as truly hers as if we actually shared the same DNA.

“Good choice,” Crystal said from just behind me. “That man’s aura is stellar. A real winner. An honest man with small-town values, no taint of big city cynicism. Way to go, girl.”

“You can see that?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

Not all smoke and mirrors. After three years I’d come to accept Crystal’s often remarkable intuition.

Didn’t make a difference, though. Well, not much. I wasn’t ready for any man in my life, no matter how loud my hormones rattled their cage. Just because this was the first time in five years I’d been tempted to fall off the celibate wagon didn’t mean I wasn’t woman enough to stand up and fight the attraction. I squared my shoulders, marched back toward the counter, and grabbed my purse out of the lowest accessory drawer. “How many returns left?” I asked.

“Two.”

“Why don’t you close up as soon as they’re back? I’m . . .”

Surprise. I hadn’t consciously thought about it, but the idea had been there all along. I didn’t really understand what was driving me. Except for my family and a couple of men in my life—one, my teenage crush, Chad Yarnell—I’d never cared for anything but designing. But now something strange was happening. Something strong enough to overpower the creative artist with an urge toward Miss Marple.

I’d barely known Martin Kellerman, but I liked him. I’d seen him die. I’d watched as they’d bagged what was left of him.

I was a witness. I cared.

A nasty case of morbid curiosity? I didn’t think so. Ruthlessly, I shoved Boone Talbot into a rosy niche in my brain marked, “Open later.”

“I’m going to canvas the neighborhood, see if anyone saw something last night.”

“You’re
what
?” Crystal gaped at me.

“Check my aura. Does it look normal?”

Crystal shook her head. “I figured you were still transitioning back to Gwyn after going neon for the cop.”

“Trust me. It’s my curiosity that’s rampant, not my hormones.” I wiggled my fingers at her. “See you back at the house.”

As the glass door swung shut behind me, Crystal was standing there, mouth open, amber eyes wide, her pink tongue showing behind a row of white teeth. Maybe long acquaintance had sprinkled a few psychic vibes in my direction. I was pretty sure I caught a telepathic,
What the hell!

Back in the sixties when the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to turn Golden Beach into an island so wealthy yacht owners would not be inconvenienced by being forced out into the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Department of Transportation considered a resultant problem. Oh, horrors, the smooth, if very long, drive from Tampa to Miami along Route 41 would now be disrupted by not one, but
two
drawbridges as the famed Tamiami Trail—built with considerable loss of life back in the twenties—crossed the newly created “island” of Golden Beach. The result: the “Bypass,” built on the east side of the Intracoastal’s five-mile canal around downtown Golden Beach. Travelers could now zip by without ever knowing they were missing one of the fine
st gems on the entire Gulfc
oast.

Forty-some years later, anonymity was considered a blessing—“too g. d. many snowbirds,” my father used to growl—but back in the sixties the reaction was inevitable. Businesses moved en masse to the Bypass, and ours was the first strip mall to rear its ugly modern head in a town known for its elegant Mediterranean Revival main street and a succession of perfectly gorgeous stucco mansions marching from the Town Hall down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Now the North Bypass Mall was forty-years-old and long since demoted to low-rent status as bigger and better malls proliferated along the Bypass and spread south, framing the Tamiami Trail in wall-to-wall ugly, with not so much as a lone cabbage palm in sight. The founding fathers, who had hired a pioneer city planner to design downtown Golden Beach, were probably still rolling in their graves. Or maybe their spirits had been so shocked, they’d simply fled to greener pastures.

But the North Bypass Mall worked for me and any other business that needed space at a rent we could afford. Downtown Golden Beach, after a struggle, had emerged as an upscale tourist attraction, our main street lined with boutiques featuring fine women’s clothing, beachwear, jewelry, candy, candles, gourmet sandwiches, seashells, sharks’ teeth, and, inevitably, real estate. My mother, Golden Beach’s top Realtor, had an office downtown, which also included a seasonal rental department. Take my word for it—in Golden Beach winter rentals were sold out by the previous July. For certain properties, someone had to die before you could get a foot through the rental door.

My stomach rumbled. Might as well start with DeFranco’s Deli next door. Sal and Angelina DeFranco had been running the deli since well before DreamWear moved in. The food was always excellent and served with a smile. To gild the lily, their seventeen-year-old son Tim had developed an interest in costumes, particularly the Medieval era, and was one of our most dependable “flexible extras,” willing to fill in after school and weekends when DreamWear needed help.

While I munched on tuna, lettuce, tomato, and pickles, washed down by the best unsweet iced tea in Golden Beach, I absorbed the purpler parts of the gossip grapevine that had passed through the deli that morning. Santa Claus, in the form of Martin Kellerman, had been so high on Christmas cheer (schnapps, cocaine?) that he’d tried to fly. Vanessa Kellerman, in a burst of overwhelming greed, had pushed poor old Santa over the side. Jeb Brannigan, his eye ever on the gold ring, had managed the whole thing without ever leaving the wheelhouse. Or maybe it was Scott Wallace—Angelina shot me an apologetic glance. After all, everyone said the delectable Vanessa Kellerman had something going on the side. And after seeing her in the French Maid Mrs. Santa, there wasn’t a soul who didn’t believe it.

“Bull,” Sal growled. “Every word. What killed him was standing up there on the bow. Anyone could have told him that’s an accident waiting to happen.”

“It’s the Intracoastal,” Angelina stated with exaggerated patience. “The
canal
part. It’s like glass.”

Sal gave her the eye. “With the wakes of twenty boats ahead of you? Come on, Angie, you don’t have to be Christopher Columbus to figure that one out.”

“Those boats were barely moving, and you know it.”

Time to insert a little truth. “I saw the whole thing,” I said. “It looked like Martin had an attack of some kind, probably heart. He simply stumbled forward and fell.”

Sal and Angie gulped air as their mouths snapped closed over whatever they’d been about to say. Angie’s liquid brown eyes gleamed. “You were
there
? We were on Center Bridge—couldn’t see much from there.”

Evidently no one was feeling creative when the Intracoastal canal cut Golden Beach off from the mainland—perhaps the result of still simmering tempers at Town Hall. The three new bridges that connected downtown and the beaches to the mainland were named North Bridge, Center Bridge, and South Bridge. Only many years later did the South Bridge officially become Circus Bridge in honor of the departed Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey. The scene of last night’s disaster was about a hundred yards south of the Center Bridge.

I gave the DeFrancos an expurgated version of what I’d told Boone Talbot, leaving Jeb Brannigan out and emphasizing Scott’s role as a hero.

Angie patted my hand. “He’s a good boy. One of these days he’ll settle down. We nearly gave up on Joseph, our oldest, and look at him now.” She tossed her hands in the air, palms out. “Wife, two babies, good job. Keeps in touch, even though they’re in Philadelphia. Just you wait, it’ll happen for Scott one of these days. I promise.”

I reached for a smile, murmured my thanks, and escaped. I vaguely remembered Joseph DeFranco, solely because he’d been on the football team with Chad Yarnell. And, yes, they’d been involved in some incidents I’d overheard my parents discussing in whispers. (Okay, I was eavesdropping for all I was worth.) But they’d both gone off to college, graduated, and dutifully plunged into the grown-up world. My brother Scott had managed a couple of years at the local community college, but at twenty-seven the grown-up world still eluded him. A status unchanged, and perhaps unchangeable. I sighed.

I decided to start at one end of the mall and work my way to the other. The sun had chased away the clouds, but I was in no danger of suffering sunstroke while I walked the mall’s length, maybe a quarter of a mile, as a roof covered the sidewalk in front of the stores. Partly because Florida suffers from an excess of sun interspersed with torrential rain in the summer, and partly because everyone wants to protect their primary source of income, the ubiquitous snowbirds who actually think our winter sun is hot, not to mention that heaven forbid rain should deter their urge to shop.