Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (17 page)

“Well, pacemakers are and will likely continue to be a successful medical product. But the problems they’ve had with lead failures make investing in those companies risky. I think you need to consider companies that blend medical technology with geriatric science. The graying of America is big business and will continue to be for the next several decades. If you can find a company that makes products used in the health care of elderly patients, and by elderly I mean fifty-five and over, assuming the company is well managed and not under-capitalized, it should be a sure winner.”  Like all investment types, Bill talked like the opinion column of the paper’s financial section. If you zoned out a second, you’d be hopelessly lost.

“I’m interested primarily in the local economy, Bill,” I said. “Are there any companies that make geriatric medical products here?”

Bill looked at me quizzically, too polite to suggest that this was the subject of the conversation I had not been listening to, even though I had pretended I was.

“Well, as I was telling George, I think there are three or four companies like that around here. I’ve invested a lot of money for our depositors in both Nations’ Health Corp. and MedPro in the last six months. The stock has been rising steadily and I’ve even been able to take profits a few times. Those would be my choices but there are others.”  He’d finished his first cigarette and lit another off the smoldering butt before he flicked it out into the street.

“Well, George is the trader in our family, but I might be interested in some information on that.”  Carly hadn’t mentioned that MedPro’s stock was rising.

“Well, sure. What about if I have my secretary drop the information in the mail to you tomorrow?”  I assured him that would be fine, then we heard the chimes indicating the orchestra was about to begin the remainder of the program. We walked back inside and George gave me his “what are you up to” look; puzzled but not concerned. I was hoping he’d stay that way. I was beginning to get an idea about MedPro and Dr. Morgan and I didn’t want to have to explain it just yet. It needed time to germinate.

As we were walking back to our seats, Victoria Warwick walked up behind me. “Willa, darling,” she said, in a mock whisper, “I hear you’ve been asking Pricilla Worthington about my personal life. The next time you want to know something, just ask me. A woman with as many secrets as Cilla shouldn’t be speculating on the lives of others.”

I must have looked mystified that Tory knew about that conversation; I was sure Cilla wouldn’t have told her. “Servants, darling. They know everything. Don’t ever get any.”  And she walked on past us closer to the front of the theater.

When we got home, George went down to check on the restaurant and we spent the rest of the evening quietly, upstairs. I told him what Tory Warwick had said to me at intermission.

“Maybe you should go talk to Tory and find out just what some of those secrets are, Willa. It could be important. Tory might be erratic, but she’s well informed.”

What an understatement that turned out to be.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tampa, Florida

Monday 9:45 a.m.

January 18, 1999

The morning delivered one of those gloriously convenient federal holidays providing us government workers a Monday off:  Martin Luther King Day. I spent the morning puttering around the house trying to put the whole Morgan mess out of my mind to give my subconscious a chance to sort it through. But no matter what I tried to concentrate on instead, I couldn’t get it off my mind. Of course, this line of thinking brought me right back to the Carly problem.

Not knowing what else to do, I felt I had no choice but to follow what George and I had decided was the only available Plan B, particularly now that Morgan’s disappearance was being treated as homicide. It was what I should have done when she first told me about finding the body--I called the chief of police.

Chief Hathaway’s secretary put me right through to him.

“Ben, Willa Carson here.”

“Right.”

“Any chance I can see you today?”

“I can come over to Minaret. You can buy me a coffee. Or you can come to the station and I’ll buy you one.”

“See you soon,” I said. Lucky for me Tampa PD operates twenty-four-seven.

Called downstairs looking for George. Not so lucky this time. For a panicky moment I thought he might have gone looking for Carly. But George was much too level-headed to do that. Hopefully.

Should I call Kate before I caused bigger problems for Carly? Or leave Kate out of the loop? Plausible deniability was a good thing. I couldn’t decide what was best.

My internal monologue on the issue resembled a child’s seesaw. Procrastination is a wonderful thing. Chief Hathaway arrived before I’d made the decision.

I invited him into the living room. If I hadn’t wanted to be seen talking with a breast implant plaintiff’s attorney, I certainly didn’t want it getting around that I was having quiet conversation with the Chief of Police.

Hathaway was a big man, not just tall but heavy. Yet, he had the agility of a ballerina, Jackie Gleason like. He looked around for a seat sturdy enough to accommodate his heavy frame. He finally chose the straight back Louis XVI chair directly across from the couch.

Offered him coffee, he accepted, and we exchanged pleasantries. I just couldn’t seem to get started.

He must have had a lot of experience with reluctant informants because finally he said, “You know, I think this is the first time you’ve ever called on me professionally. I’m assuming there must be some very urgent reason for that.”

For a moment, I worried I might be making a mistake.

Then I remembered Carly’s description of Dr. Morgan’s house and realized the police had already been there, after she was. They had her fingerprints already. Like all practicing lawyers, her prints were on file. If we came clean now, she might seem less guilty somehow.

Besides, in Carly’s account there might be something the police had overlooked. The evidence might already be too old to be useful. Although some coroner could probably have figured it out, I wasn’t too sure about our local talent. I told Ben everything Carly had told me. When I finished, he looked at me thoughtfully. After a time, he asked me a question I cursed myself for not expecting before I called him.

“How well do you know this woman?”

I said, “I’ve known her all her life. Why?”

“Well, let’s be professional about this, shall we? She seems to have a lot of information about a murder. How reliable is she? Should we consider her a suspect?”

I don’t know what came over me. My response was as cold as winter in Alaska and just as outrageous. “Ben Hathaway, there is no possibility that Carly murdered this man. I want you to put that thought out of your mind right now. If you persist in pursuing her as a suspect, I will personally issue a restraining order against you.”

He flinched. But his response was controlled. “If you did that, Judge Carson, it would be a gross abuse of your judicial authority. There’s a limit to your power.”

I waited.

More reasonably, he said, “Interfering with the investigation of a crime was enough to bring down Richard Nixon. It’s not something you want to get involved with.”

“Maybe so,” I replied, unable to back off. “But, I’ll do it nevertheless.”

We stared each other down for a few minutes. Whether he concluded I would be true to my word and tie him up in red tape for a month, or simply recognized we wouldn’t get anywhere tonight by testing me, I don’t know.

He adopted a much more conciliatory tone. “Okay, let’s abandon that line of thinking for now. But consider this: If she’s not involved now, she soon may be.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said she’d been talking to Dr. Morgan regularly before he disappeared. Then, you told me that when she went to his home, someone had searched it. If they found what they were looking for, and then killed him, you better hope what they found didn’t implicate your little rabbit. As near as I can tell, just about every woman ‘of a certain age’ in Tampa would have a motive to kill him, not to mention their husbands. And that doesn’t even count the business enemies.”  He ticked off the possibilities like reading a grocery list. No one was above suspicion as far as he was concerned.

“Well obviously, that makes it that much more important that you find Carly, and that you find out immediately if Dr. Morgan is the body in the water and, if he’s not, where he is and who is after him.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job,” Hathaway snapped at me. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you’ve been a judge. If you’ll just keep your nose out of it, I’ll take care of my end. If you think of anything else that might be helpful, call me and talk only to me. Here’s my private line.”  He threw his business card down on the coffee table between us. “And then you better spend some time finding your friend a good criminal lawyer. She’s going to need it. If she doesn’t end up dead first.”

He walked out. I refused to go after him, and I was more than a little annoyed at the arrogant way he treated me. But I was scared, too. He was right to be pissed off that I had knowledge of a potential crime and, as far as he knew, didn’t advise the police. On the other hand, Carly certainly did not kill Dr. Morgan and, if he focused his energies on making her the murderer, he wouldn’t be finding Morgan’s real killer. If Morgan was dead. I kept hoping he wasn’t.

Come to that, how many missing persons reports would he have to consider when he was looking for the identity of a dead body, anyway?  There can’t be that many people disappearing from the city of Tampa without a trace.

I had one of those “ah ha” moments Kate’s always talking about: I realized there was no information on Morgan’s identity in the press before Carly went to the house because Hathaway knew who the body was. Morgan didn’t have any relatives to notify, so they felt comfortable keeping it quiet, waiting for someone to do just what I did. Identify him.

Hathaway must have believed that the killer would be more likely to make mistakes the longer it looked like the police hadn’t identified the body. Now, I had given them Carly and confessed that I’d known about Morgan for two weeks. Carly and I might not need a lawyer, but we needed advice from someone who was thinking a lot clearer than George and I were. I decided to talk to a criminal lawyer tomorrow. In the meantime, I picked up the phone and called Kate. It was time to come clean with her. She wasn’t home and I got her machine. Shit!  Doesn’t anybody ever answer their telephone anymore?

I had to find Carly before Hathaway did and persuade her to tell the rest of what she knew. One thing I agreed with Hathaway about; she hadn’t come clean with me on her conversations with Morgan and what they had been working on together. Whatever it was, it was enough to get Morgan killed and Carly might be next. Carly’s real motivation for keeping her conversations with Morgan secret should have occurred to me, but it didn’t. Not for a while, anyway.

I put on my running shoes and got my car keys. I went down the stairs two at a time, racing (decorously, of course) toward my car. I knew where the spare key to Carly’s apartment was and I would start there. She lives in a gated community and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get in without her consent. A year or so ago I was listed on her limited access list, and I hoped she hadn’t changed it. I needed to get to her apartment before Hathaway got there. I knew he would dispatch officers immediately, as soon as he figured out where she lived. He’d left in such a rage he hadn’t asked me, and the way he had behaved, I wasn’t sure I would have told him.

I drove my car about twenty-five miles an hour over the speed limit all the way from Minaret to Carly’s apartment complex in St. Pete Beach. It’s a 25-minute drive under normal conditions, and I made it in fifteen. Because St. Petersburg is outside Hathaway’s jurisdiction, I was hoping that it would take more than fifteen minutes to get a police car dispatched to Carly’s home, even if he could immediately locate the address.

As I pulled up into the guard station at the entrance to her complex, there were four cars in line ahead of me in the one lane driveway. I watched as the security guard talked to the driver of the first car. They were having a friendly chat about the weather, or the last Devil Rays baseball game at the Tropicana Dome or something. What seemed like an hour, and was probably no more than three minutes, passed while the security guard wrote out a visitor’s pass for the car and allowed it through the gate.

All of us inched up one car length. The routine was repeated with the second car, and then the third. By this time, I’d waited in line longer than it took me to drive there. Finally, finally, finally, the security guard approached my car. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “How are you today?”

I swallowed my impatience. Everyone else seemed to be on island time, so I tried to fit in by appearing laid back. I don’t think he could see my toes tapping, but I’m not sure. “Fine, thank you. I’m here to see Carly Austin. I think I’m on her access list. Please don’t call up. It’s her birthday and I want to surprise her.”  I smiled my brightest smile, flirting with him a little. How old was I when I figured out that older men are easily manipulated by a woman who flirts?

“And what’s your name, miss?  I’ll just look it up quickly and then I can let you in,” he said with a big, conspiratorial smile. I gave him my name as I looked in my rear view mirror.

I could see no police cars, or at least no marked police cars, either behind me in line or coming up the driveway. There was a satisfyingly long line developing, and I was pretty sure that a police car would have the same difficulty getting through the gate I’d had. Once the cars had lined up at the guard shack, there was nowhere for them to go but through the gate into the complex. The cops would have to wait their turn like everybody else.

Eventually, the guard returned from the shack with my visitor’s pass and a smile. He opened the gate and waived me through. He said, “Say happy birthday to Ms. Austin for me. I thought she was out of town. She’s one of our most pleasant residents and I haven’t seen her much lately.”