Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (12 page)

Puttered across the bridge, onto the island, and toward the house. I asked the valet to put the top up on the car and went inside, intending to change into running shorts and a T-shirt and take the dogs out.

But when I walked into the lobby, I saw Kate sitting in the dining room with Victoria Warwick and Cilla Worthington.

Tried to sneak around to the winding staircase that goes from the main entrance to the house up to the second floor, but Kate saw me and waved me over. Shook my head furiously, signaling her that I didn’t want to come in, but Victoria spied me, too.

Trapped.

Failed to appear gracious as I walked into the dining room and approached their table.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tampa, Florida

Friday 4:45 p.m.

January 8, 1999

“Wilhelmina, please join us,” Victoria said, her speech slurred just enough to let me know how many Bloody Marys she’d already consumed in addition to the one on the table in front of her. Kate and Cilla both insisted that I sit down and I couldn’t graciously refuse.

Kate and Cilla looked like what they were: middle-aged matrons at lunch. But again today, Victoria had on a bright pink dress suitable for a much younger woman, tight in the bodice with another low-cut neckline. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Sunlight illuminates everything:  she was no longer tewnty-five years old, or even fifty-five. But she was blessed with a long neck and her bosom did look fantastic. She laughed loudly, put her hands on the sides of her breasts to push them up almost out of the top of her dress. She said, “It’s impolite to stare, my dear, but aren’t they fantastic?”

Embarrassed to be caught looking, I blushed but had to agree.

“I had them done in New York about six months ago. I’ll tell you it wasn’t easy to find a doctor who would do them, even though I offered to pay twice the normal cost. I tried to get Mike Morgan to do them for old time’s sake, but he wouldn’t return my calls. Men are such assholes, especially the ones you’ve slept with. They think it gives them the right to be an asshole for some reason.”

Cilla’s nostrils flared, whether at the crude language or the mention of Victoria’s well-known philandering, I couldn’t tell. “It’s bad enough that you’ve slept with every man in town, Victoria. Is it necessary to broadcast it, too?  It’s not like you’re the only woman in Tampa to have had an affair with Mike Morgan. Take a number.”  She was impatient, and snappier than usual. And she sounded too bitter.

More to distract them from Morgan than anything, I said, “I’ve never known any doctor to refuse to do elective surgery. There’s so much profit in plastic surgery. If you agreed to pay twice the cost, why would they possibly refuse?”

Victoria was remarkably coherent, and much more voluble than she likely would have been if she hadn’t been drunk. “Well, there’s been an FDA moratorium on breast implant surgery for several years. The only way to get silicone breast implants now is to become a part of a controlled study. And, of course, for the controlled studies they want younger, more vigorous women or cancer reconstruction patients. You wouldn’t believe all the releases I had to sign and the strings I made the senator pull to get them to do it. But they did, obviously.”  She giggled, looking down her chest. No kidding.

“But aren’t you afraid of the health risks?  Tory, really, this is a fairly stupid thing you’ve done to your body.”  Cilla was out of patience. She may be a grand dame, but she doesn’t suffer fools.

Victoria looked at all of us with open hostility. “I think it’s fairly obvious that my body is no temple. It takes years for the ill health effects from implants to develop, according to the doomsday theories. I’m sure I won’t live that long, if my darling husband’s wishes have anything to do with it. A widower is so much more electable than a man with an adulterous wife, you know. Everyone wants to know
why
she cheats.”

None of us had a response to that. Kate changed the subject to some recent charitable activities they were involved in and that gave me my excuse to leave. As I walked out of the dining room, they were still discussing the budget for the next homeless shelter benefit, and I was trying to figure out why discussing Tory Warwick’s affair with Dr. Morgan would make Cilla so angry and Kate so quiet.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tampa, Florida

Friday 5:15 p.m.

January 8, 1999

Upstairs, both Harry and Bess were guarding the door waiting for anyone who happened to come in so that they could immediately lick intruders to death. Both bounded toward me whining to jump on my suit for ear scratching. I waved them down and changed into running clothes. Then gave in, got down on the floor and rolled around with both of them for a while. Together, they out-weigh me by thirty pounds.

Bess is black and Harry is yellow. Like their namesakes, they’re fiercely independent, no-nonsense dogs, thoroughly devoted to one another. We got them originally for protection as guard dogs because so many strangers come into what is, after all, our home. Pricilla Worthington told me once, after Harry slobbered all over her Dior dress, “If you had a gun, and knew how to use it like everyone else in Tampa, you wouldn’t need these noxious creatures.”  But I’m from Detroit. Nothing as sissy as handguns for protection for us.

Of course, anyone who spends five seconds with Harry and Bess realizes what useless guard dogs they are. They do have big barks and that counts for something, at least to strangers. We still pay the alarm company every month, just in case.

After I put on my running shoes, we went down the back stairs, avoiding everyone else who might be in the restaurant, to the beach. I threw sticks and toys into the water for them to chase for a while before we began our run.  After fifteen minutes of having wet sticks returned by two ninety-pound dogs, I was as wet as they were. I threw the last two sticks and took off in the opposite direction, counter clockwise around the island. If I don’t play with them some beforehand, there’s no way I can keep up.

By the time they got the sticks out of the water and came after me it took them, maybe, fifteen seconds to pass me up. It’s a little contest I have with myself. I’ve made it as far as twenty seconds ahead of them, but I have to throw the sticks pretty far out first.

When I’m in good form, I do an entire lap around Plant Key, or maybe two. Other days, I just do half a lap and take a golf cart back. Because I was feeling guilty about leaving the office early and I had plenty of time before sundown; today would be a complete lap day.

A lot of people run just for exercise, hating every minute of it. For me, though, it’s a spiritual experience. I love the sand, the water, the sunshine and the companionship I get from Harry and Bess. After years of running, I’m able to get to the runner’s high in about three minutes and it carries me the remainder of the run. Sometimes, I have to consciously make myself stop. Otherwise, I might be like the tiger chasing Sambo and run around so long and so fast that I melt into butter. During the summer I feel like I’m melting.

Today I considered what I’d learned on my visit to MedPro and at lunch from Carly. Something about her explanation just didn’t fit with the facts. It was nagging me and the more I tried to focus on it, the more elusive it became. I attacked it another way. Why would Dr. Morgan call Carly with his discovery when he could have called Zimmer or Young directly?  He knew them better and they had a history together. Why would he pick a young, gullible and inexperienced employee to disclose such allegedly valuable information?  It just didn’t make sense, unless he planned to use that inexperience for his own ends. Or, and this was more likely, Carly wasn’t telling me everything. I worked out a plan for finding out the rest.

As I came up the back stairs after my run, our private phone rang and George answered it.

“Its Marilee Aymes, for you,” he said as he handed me the cordless. I wondered how she got the number. Like my office number, it’s unlisted and only given out to the family.

“Dr. Aymes.  So nice to hear from you.”  Another lie. To the best of my knowledge, information and belief, as we lawyers say, Marilee Aymes had never called me before.

“Wilhelmina,” she said, imperious as usual. “We have a foursome for next Sunday and we’ve lost one of our group. The handicapper said you’re a ten, which would place you at the high end of the group, but he suggested we ask you to fill in. Are you free?”

Kate would say when you want a thing, it happens. I was trying to figure out a way to talk to Marilee Aymes, and she just called. There are no coincidences in life. I accepted.

George and I had a wedding to go to that night.

We went, we ate, we came home.

I always make Friday night an early one. It’s a pleasant end to a long week, and besides, I play golf every Saturday at 6:00 a.m. with my former partner, Mitchell Crosby, out at Great Oaks.

We’ve tried playing other courses, just to keep our skills up, but there’s something about the familiarity of the holes, the fairways and the greens that challenges us to beat our best games. We play best here, on our home turf, but that’s not the reason we keep coming out to the same 18 holes every weekend.

I’m not an early riser and I can’t make it to the office before 9:00, at the earliest. But on Saturday, I jump up before sunrise, slip on a golf shirt and Bermudas in some wild combination of colors, and sneak out of the house so as not to wake Harry and Bess. For a while there they were on to me, and they’d sleep right next to the bed so I couldn’t get away from them. If they wake up, they have to be fed and run before anything else. They know they’re the center of our universe and the world revolves around them, not George, although he likes to think he’s the Master Cylinder.

So, if I don’t get out without waking them up, we can’t tee off until 7:00, which doesn’t sound like much of a problem unless you’re a golfer in Florida in July. If you are, you know what I mean. If you’re not, you don’t want to hear about it anyway.

On this particular Saturday in January, it was dark at 5:30 when I woke up, and a little too cool. George had opened the windows sometime during the night and the warmth of our Egyptian cotton sheets and down comforter almost sucked me back in for another couple of hours. But I knew Mitch would be on the first tee in thirty minutes. He lost five dollars last week, and whenever he was down in our weekly wagers, he couldn’t rest until he won it back. If I skip a day like that, he declares himself the winner and will not back down. Mitch is more than a little obsessive, overbearing and stubborn. Some would say we’re perfectly matched.

Once I was washed and dressed, I ran out to the car. Dew on the St. Augustine grass and Impatiens gave everything a crystalline shimmer. As I drove out the circle, the sun was lightening the sky over the Port of Tampa and Harbour Island. By the time I crossed the Plant Key Bridge, the sun glinted on Hillsborough Bay and two dolphins swimming side by side raced Greta and me the length of the bridge. They won. It was glorious. I’ve always loved morning. It’s just that I usually sleep through it.

It’s a short drive to Great Oaks. As I approached the large, plantation-style club house, I realized, as I always do, how amazing it is that such a beautiful 36-hole golf course is nestled right in the center of South Tampa. I parked the car and walked to the pro shop. Since I play every Saturday, the caddies had my cart set up with my clubs. I went into the women’s locker room and put on my golf shoes before meeting Mitch at the cart. Of course, he was ready to go, already behind the wheel. On the golf course, as on the road, men do the driving if the women don’t get there first.

At the first tee, Mitch hit a drive 200 yards with his Big Bertha driver and was feeling pretty smug, thinking, I’m sure, that he’d be getting his $5 back today. By the end of the first nine, though, I was two strokes under and he was becoming surly. I remembered my mother telling me that I needed to let the boys win; otherwise they wouldn’t play with me anymore. She obviously hadn’t known Mitch. It’s when he’s winning that he wants to stop.

We always eat lunch in the clubhouse. Today, Mitch wasn’t quite as interested in gloating over his winnings as usual.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Actually, I was feeling sorry for Mrs. Junior. I’ve always liked her, even if she is rather homely.”  He said, referring to the CJ’s daughter-in-law, his only son’s wife, using the nickname we’ve privately, and derisively, given her husband.

“Why?” I asked,   “She has everything in the world. Aside from having to live with Junior, I’d say there are only about fifty million women in the country who would gladly trade places with her.”

“Not today. Junior made a complete fool of himself a few years ago and his wife, too. He resigned from our firm yesterday because the scandal broke.”

“No kidding!  Junior, heir apparent, the anointed one, one day to become the second great and powerful Oz himself?  What on earth possessed him to do that?”  This was truly juicy news, if only because it would cause the CJ so much consternation. Junior was detested by every partner in my old firm lower on the ladder than he was, and by some who were a little higher up. It’s not that Junior was really such a bad guy, it was just that he got his privileges the old-fashioned way--Daddy bought them for him.

To be fair, he probably would have done well enough on his own if he’d been a little more pleasant. But he was one of those guys who always had sand kicked in his face as a kid. He was scrawny, wore glasses, and had a sour personality. In truth, he was one of the reasons I sought a judicial appointment after he came over to the firm a few years ago. Practicing another twenty years with Junior running the show was more than I could bear. Maybe I had to work with his father as the Chief Judge now, but the CJ had no real power over me. Working with Junior as my managing partner was unacceptable. Now, then and always.

“You have to give me all the details. And don’t you dare leave anything out.”  We ordered burgers and beer, our standard Saturday lunch. The beer came in tall, frosty mugs while we waited for the well-done burgers cooked the Jimmy Buffet way: cheese, lettuce, pickles, tomato and onion. Fries, too, of course.