Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (16 page)

Limited details of the disappearance of Dr. Michael Morgan were released to the press today in a news conference by Chief Ben Hathaway. Chief Hathaway said in a prepared statement:  “We are trying to identify a dark four door sedan, possibly a Lincoln Town Car or a Cadillac, seen by a neighbor outside Dr. Morgan’s home three weeks ago. We are now treating Dr. Morgan’s disappearance as a homicide. We believe Dr. Morgan’s body was in the car. We identified tire tracks on the grass near the side door of Dr. Morgan’s house.”

An eye witness came forward yesterday. Chief Benjamin Hathaway told reporters that the witness saw the car, saw its lights go on and saw it drive away. Chief Hathaway told reporters that Dr. Morgan’s home contained evidence relating his disappearance to homicide.

“We found evidence of a struggle, blood soaked tile and other physical evidence consistent with homicide.”

It was getting more and more difficult to protect Carly, not to mention me. George and I struggled with the issues most of the night. We didn’t get to bed until 3:00 a.m., and we were no closer to a decision on what to do. I wondered what other careers I might like all through the sleepless night, but I could only see the down sides to all of them.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Tampa, Florida

Sunday 5:30 a.m.

January 17, 1999

It wasn’t hard to get up for my golf game with Dr. Aymes Sunday morning since I never went to sleep. I was in no mood to play, but it was way too late to cancel. George was more fortunate; he was snoring softly when I crept out of the bedroom. I snatched the Sunday papers off the front porch and searched for further news of Dr. Morgan. I didn’t have to look far. While the disappearance of a once prominent surgeon may not command front page coverage, his death did, although still below the fold.

No closer to solving the mysterious disappearance of Dr. Michael Morgan, Police Chief Ben Hathaway released further details of the investigation Saturday. He said police found Dr. Morgan’s scheduling notebook inside his home and are in the process of interviewing everyone with whom Dr. Morgan had contact in the weeks before his disappearance. Because there are no signs of forced entry or burglary, police believe Dr. Morgan may have been killed by someone he knew.

And maybe someone we all know, I thought. The rest of the article repeated the information printed in the earlier stories. Incredibly, there was no link, and no speculation, connecting Morgan’s disappearance with the unidentified body. How could they be so dense?  Wasn’t it obvious to everyone?  The timing, the disappearance, the homicide?  It just didn’t make sense to me and I couldn’t figure it out. But George wasn’t up yet so I could discuss it with him, and the dogs are good listeners but somewhat short on analytical ability. I couldn’t wait any longer. I left the paper propped by the coffee pot and dashed out to Great Oaks.

  You know you’re playing with serious golfers when they have a 6:30 tee time on Sunday. Only a serious player get on the course at prime time. I was paired with Dr. Aymes. The other two golfers were Grover’s partner, Fred Johnson, and another doctor I didn’t know. We walked up to the first tee promptly at 6:30 and the men were 240 yards down the first fairway four minutes later.

I thought Dr. Aymes was just being snide when she said my ten handicap was high for the group. She wasn’t. These golfers were going to end up waiting for me, and it put me at an immediate disadvantage. It wasn’t until later that I figured out she had deliberately invited me knowing I wouldn’t be able to compete, even if I’d had a clear head for the game. In my present state, I was about to get killed. On the golf course, that is.

Marilee hit her first drive from the blue tee about 220 yards. I held my head high, hit from the red tee, and landed just about thirty yards behind her. We got into the cart and she drove.

“Nice shot, Willa. But if you want to play with the better golfers, you’ve got to shoot from the blue tees.”

“Not today,” I said.

“No guts, no glory.”

“Maybe, but with this group, I’ll be lucky if I can keep my head above water.”  My temples were starting to throb, a dull pounding resembling the beat of a Johnny Mathis tune. I put my sunglasses on as well as my visor. The dim pre dawn light was too much. I was just thrilled with the idea of bright, glaring sunshine in half an hour.

“Just hit ‘em straight, and you’ll beat these two. I always put them together because they end up in the woods and it saves time.”  I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or just being Marilee.

She zipped the cart over to my ball and we were off. I finished the hole with a double bogey and felt grateful. Marilee missed a par by a five foot putt.

By the third hole, Marilee had me laughing with her outrageous commentary, and I’d decided her sharp wit wasn’t meant to be malicious. My headache was a slow Bob Seeger tune by this time, but rock ’n roll suits me better anyway. “Who’s your usual partner, Marilee?”

“Michael Morgan. But he hasn’t played in a month.”

“Why not?”

“He’s out of town or something. I haven’t heard from him. And his substitute is Carolyn Young, but she couldn’t make it today.”

“Why not?”  I felt like a parrot.

“I don’t know. When I called her, she just said she couldn’t play.”

This was an opportunity too convenient to pass up, and I was glad I hadn’t just called and canceled. I asked her, feigning nonchalance, how she knew Dr. Morgan and Dr. Young.

“We were all at various stages of our practice at UCF about fifteen years ago. We had a foursome including Dr. Zimmer going on then.”

“I had no idea you all knew each other so well.”  Even in my weakened state, I silently blessed the concept of synchronicity. Maybe I’d become a believer yet. Somewhat like Dorothy on her return trip from Oz, I began to repeat to myself, “There are no coincidences in life, there are no . . .”

“We were all close until Carolyn stole my project. Then, I stopped talking to them for ten years. Mike wormed his way into this foursome and then Carolyn started coming. When she plays, I play with Johnson. I certainly couldn’t spend two hours in a golf cart with her.”

“What did she steal from you?”

“The whole thing. Everything they used to start MedPro. The idea, the grant prospect. All of it.”

She tried to act like this was ancient history, but I could tell she was still bitter about it. “We were close once, Carolyn and I. We shared an apartment and we both worked in the research department at UCF. She was younger than I, and she always seemed so vulnerable, somehow. I tried to take care of her, I guess.  It was my idea to concentrate on a more responsive gel. I had a grant prospect I thought I could sell to UCF and I was putting together a proposal. It’s up to a tenured professor to find enough money to pay at least sixty percent of her salary, so it was an important prospect to me. It would have covered my salary for three years. I was excited, so I told her about it and she stole it. As simple as that.”

We were on the fifth hole by this time. It’s a long hole, but it dog legs to the right, and I was trying to figure out which club to hit off the tee for the best position on my second shot.

“Try your three wood,” Marilee said. “Your driver will put you past the turn.”

I pulled out my three, hit the ball way off to the left and cursed under my breath. “It works better if you hit it straight,” she smirked.

“Thanks for the tip.” I said, with as much sarcasm as I dared, as she walked up to the tee.

“Carolyn Young never had an original thought in her life.”  The venom in her words might not have sent the ball that extra twenty yards, but if the ball had been Carolyn Young’s head, she’d be in the next county. If it had been my head, at least this damn pounding wouldn’t be connected to my body any more.

Marilee must have read my thoughts. “That’s how I improved my game. Every time I stepped up to the tee, I imagined Young, Morgan or Zimmer’s head instead of the ball. Improved my drives two-hundred percent.”

On the way back to the cart, I asked her, “How did Carolyn Young steal your project?”

“She told Morgan and Zimmer that she had done the work. She batted her eyes, swished her hips.”  Marilee jiggled her behind back and forth exaggeratedly as she walked. “Then she screwed Zimmer, so they believed her. He was the leader of our little foursome then because he was the oldest. She didn’t care that he was married and had five kids.”  She waited for me to get my ball out of the rough before driving us over to hers, lying right in the fairway, a straight 250 yards from the green. She hit a three iron and the ball fell about seventy-five yards short.

“Carolyn convinced Zimmer and Morgan followed along. She gave them all my written work, which she stole off my desk one night when I was out at the lab.”

“Why didn’t you just tell them it was yours?”

“I did. They thought I was just jealous. They knew she was brilliant and her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her mother needed an implant. They believed Carolyn had extra motivation. That she’d worked on the idea night and day. Hah!”  She hit her ball within two feet of the cup, then walked back to where I was standing and waited for me to make it to the green.

She seemed to want to talk about it, so she just kept pouring out the story. “Later on, I actually started to play with them so I would win every week. We bet. High stakes. I always win,” she said as she sank the putt easily for an eagle making her five under par for the first five holes.

“What about Johnson?  When did he come into the picture?”  I set up for my putt, squatting down to visualize the line perpendicular to the hole.

“Zimmer had a heart attack last year. Scared him and Matildy. I guess he stared mortality in the face and decided an old grudge match was not the way he wanted to end his days. So he quit. Morgan brought Johnson into the group.”

“Was that ok with you?”  I tapped the ball lightly, but the green was fast and I over played the hole. Another two putt. At this rate, I’d be lucky to finish last even if the headache didn’t finish me first.

“It’s a good news/bad news story. The good thing about Johnson is he loses as gracefully as the rest of them do. The bad thing is he’s a lousy golfer, although he’s better than you.”  She just couldn’t resist. “And he’s a less pleasant s.o.b. to be around. He’s especially offensive to Morgan. I don’t know why Morgan doesn’t tell him to kiss off. I’ve considered it a couple of times myself.”

We finished the game in record time. I don’t think I’ve ever played with such a competitive group. My score wasn’t worth mentioning when they all settled up at the nineteenth hole. The day’s entertainment would have cost me two-thousand dollars, but they made it a gift since I hadn’t known the rules in advance. The shock killed my headache and I went home, wiser in every respect.

George wasn’t at home when I got there, so instead of just brooding about Carly and Dr. Morgan, I did something a little more productive. I went upstairs into the den and sat down at the desk where Aunt Minnie had done her household accounts as a young bride. It was a partner’s desk; one person could sit at either side and both could work in the middle.

I took out the ubiquitous yellow legal pad and wrote down everything Carly had told me, and everything else I had surmised or discovered about Dr. Morgan’s death in the past few days. I put each separate fact on a separate sheet of paper. For each fact, I listed everything I’d like to know about it to determine if it had any significance.  I had acquired quite a bit of information, most of it useless. I noticed that I was now calling it Dr. Morgan’s death, even though I still didn’t know for sure that he was dead. I told you I was no scientist.

I had a lot more questions than answers, but I found some glaring discrepancies, too. Not the least of which was that I knew Carly hadn’t told me everything and I didn’t know why. She was worried about something, and emotionally keyed up over the whole thing to a much greater degree than I would have expected.

I was still writing, considering and analyzing when George came in with Harry and Bess. They let me know they were feeling neglected, so I put aside my work and we all went for a long walk and then a little afternoon delight, you should pardon the pun.

After that, I turned it all over to my subconscious, fell into a deep and blissfully untroubled sleep until early evening.

George and I were going to the Florida Orchestra with Bill and Betty Sheffield, meeting them just before the baton was raised at 7:30 at the Performing Arts Center. I still had to hustle to get showered and changed, but George was already dressed and ready to go.

I apologized for missing the cocktail hour, and told him I might have time for a quick glass of wine in the car, but George wanted to drive instead of getting a driver, so I left him to drink alone while I finished getting dressed. I quickly did my makeup and was just slipping on my jade silk jumpsuit when George called to me that it was 7:00 and we needed to get moving.

I selected my pearls and black satin sandals to complete the look. Bright red lipstick seemed too flashy somehow, so I selected a deeper wine color, threw a few things into my evening bag and dashed downstairs. George drove the Bentley and we arrived just in time to use the valet and find our seats before the program began. Bill and Betty were already seated. We whispered hello and then fell silent for the program.

At intermission, Betty went toward the ladies’ room and the rest of us headed outside so Bill could have a cigarette. As we walked out, Bill asked George how his investments were coming and they began to discuss the risks and benefits of technology stocks during the current bull market. I practiced the art of appearing to listen, and allowed my mind to wander until the mention of MedPro brought my attention sharply back to the conversation. When I tuned in, Bill was still attempting to convince George of the merits of investing in emerging medical products manufacturing companies.

“Which companies do you think are the best buys?” I asked, surprising both men by my sudden interest.