Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) (2 page)

I nodded encouragement to keep the words flowing because I couldn’t fathom Carly involved in murder. The possibility didn’t surface.

“Let me ask you a hypothetical question,” Carly said.

That very second, I knew.  She wasn’t looking for sisterly advice. Not the usual boyfriend trouble or help with credit card bills. Carly was involved in something much, much worse. My body shivered with visceral certainty even before my brain acknowledged.

I should have stopped her right there.  Should have cloaked us both with appropriate protections. I knew what to do. I knew how to do it.

But did I even try to dodge the bullet I saw coming straight at me? No. So how much smarter had all those Detroit homicides made me?

CHAPTER TWO

Tampa, Florida

Wednesday 5:05 p.m.

January 6, 1999

It was like watching my own train wreck.

Gooseflesh raised on my skin.

Carly had set me up. I felt foolish for letting her get away with it. And I was scared for her. She’d manipulated me, which meant she knew she was in serious trouble. Why didn’t she take her guilty conscience to Tampa’s best criminal defense attorney? At least he would have been required to keep her secrets.

Masterfully played, though. Showed up here without warning; protested my invitation to talk just strongly enough to establish reluctance. Didn’t volunteer information, but waited until I insisted she tell me. Forced me to press her until she relented.

I might not keep her secrets, but nothing she told me could be used against her now. Under the law, she’d been interrogated in violation of her constitutional rights. It didn’t matter that she knew she had rights; it only mattered that I hadn’t warned her before she spilled her story.

She must have used the technique hundreds of times before. Like a dumb street criminal, I had walked right into her game before I realized we were on the playing field. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t expecting to discuss murder in the moon glow.

No matter. I am the law; a role that suits like second skin, as Carly well knows.

Keeping score? Carly Austin, member in good standing of the Florida Bar, one; Wilhelmina Carson, United States District Court Judge for the Middle District of Florida, zero.

Maybe she saw my dawning understanding and figured I might actually strangle her, for she perched on the chair’s edge, ready to run should the need arise.  I’ll admit, shaking her silly appealed. I grabbed my biceps instead.

Carly’s words rushed faster.

“Hypothetically speaking,” she said -- my teeth clamped painfully onto my cheek -- “What if someone might know the identity of that body?  Would they be
required
to go to the police? Tell who they think it is? Even if they’re not sure?”

She stressed the word
required
to emphasize her legal question. One that posed serious risks to us both.

And raised my temperature a good ten degrees. Hers, too, judging by her deeply crimsoned face. I appreciated the warmth.

Just like she’d done all her life, Carly put me in a hell of a spot, even if she was telling me the whole story, which I was very sure she wasn’t.

Carly’s usual style was to reveal only what she thought you needed to know. As a kid, she’d say, “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” but that wouldn’t have been a funny line at the moment.

Swiftly, my mind stepped through the logic.

Knowing the dead man’s identity alone wasn’t enough to scare her so badly.  She’d have handled that small issue on her own. One phone call to the police chief or even an anonymous 911 tip. Simple problem with a quick resolution.

No, complications motivated her behavior.

Whether she was
required
to disclose information about the identity of this body depended on how she obtained the knowledge--and who was asking. Consequences chased her here. But why? She didn’t kill the guy. Right? I was afraid to ask; she might tell me.

Reporting Carly to the local police for withholding evidence or being an accessory to obstruction of justice and facing impeachment myself. Just great.

Eyed the watery gin, tempted to drink it anyway and let it take the edge off, if it could.

I said, “Let’s recap. A drowning accident. Hypothetical bystander may know the victim’s identity. Your question is: Does an ordinary citizen have a legal obligation to report unsubstantiated suspicion?”

“I don’t know,” Carly said quietly. “I mean, let’s assume you don’t know for
sure
who it is, but you have enough facts to suggest a realistic possibility.”

“The easy thing to do is make the call, isn’t it? Any decent citizen would volunteer whatever information he might have about the identity of a murder victim,” I told her. “Think of the man’s family, if nothing else.”

She didn’t notice that I’d slipped into personalizing her facts. As always, Carly was totally focused on Carly. She was crazy not to call this in. She could lose her license to practice law if she handled things the wrong way.  She could end up in jail.

And I might be the one who had to report her. Neither one of us wanted that to happen. I ran my fingers through my hair and blew out a stream of frustration.

Old annoyance elbowed concern aside. Carly was in trouble; she should tell me about it and stop acting like a cross between flaky child and super spy. How could I fix her problem if I didn’t know what it was?  I love Carly, if love is a way to describe my feelings. And I’d do anything for her mother. But Carly doesn’t make it easy.
Dammit!

I watched as she calculated how much to reveal: keep me tethered, but not overplay her hand. Gamesmanship. Maybe she’d been AWOL from my life a while, but her methods sure hadn’t changed.

“Carly?”

“Well, hypothetically speaking, suppose you had been spending a lot of time with a guy and he missed an important meeting with you and for a month after that you were never able to get in touch with him,” she said, parceling out the information as if she was serving up expensive Kobe beef to a homeless woman.

My patience snapped. “I know a number of people I haven’t seen in a month, but I don’t believe any of them have been submerged in Tampa Bay all that time.”

 What the hell. I reached for the gin and drank about half of it. Even with mostly melted ice water filling the glass, I felt it hit my stomach with a jolt. I should have had lunch.

“Yes, but then stories started appearing in the paper about his disappearance.” Carly looked at the water for several moments.  Voice so quiet I had to lean closer to hear, she said, “And the last time I saw him, he told me someone was going to kill him.”

The effects of the gin evaporated as quickly as they’d settled over me. Years of listening to clients’ stories, sitting stone-faced in court while your theory of the case gets flattened by opposing counsel, then on the bench listening to all manner of ridiculous tales, I’d learned to appear cool and calm no matter what happened.

But appearing cool and being calm are two different things. My pounding heart and racing pulse gave me the real story.

I could feel my hands starting to shake, so I sat on them. I didn’t need what her mother calls my “inner wisdom” to tell me Carly believed, absolutely.

She knew who he was; that he’d been murdered.

Maybe she even knew who killed him.

Oh, God,
I prayed. But for what? To be wrong? To turn back the clock and let me erase this entire conversation?

Merely knowing the dead man put Carly closer to murder than I wanted either of us to be, closer than I’d felt when I lived in Detroit and anonymous people were murdered every day.

“Hypothetically speaking, who does the bystander believe the dead man is?”  I barely recognized my own voice, and I wasn’t sure Carly heard me.

I cleared my throat and said “Carly?” a little louder.

Noticing the change, she turned her head and looked at me directly, unblinking.

“Doctor Michael Morgan.”  She thrust a small piece of newspaper toward me. “Here.”

She’d been holding it crumpled up in her hand. The paper was wet, the ink smeared with her sweat. I flattened out the creases. The story was short, from the
Tribune
, dated about two weeks earlier. No pictures.

DOCTOR MISSING

Once prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Morgan

has been reported missing. Dr. Morgan lives alone and

has become a recluse in recent years following his conviction

on drug possession charges eight years ago.

A few details followed, but nothing relevant.

I realized I’d been holding my breath. I sat back in my chair and tried to breathe normally; Carly continued, looking straight through me.

Dr. Morgan was a locally prominent plastic surgeon. Legendary. A boy wonder. Some said a genius. I’d never met him, but I’d seen his resume in my court files many times. Small town tax rolls listed entire populations in fewer pages.

Morgan had been published more than once in every major American medical journal, authored two textbooks and done plastic surgery on three-fourths of Florida’s affluent citizens, males and females alike. He taught at the medical school; lectured on medical legal issues at the law school. In short, he was about as close to medical genius as they come.

Cold sober now, I tried but couldn’t grasp the idea that Dr. Morgan had been so malevolently killed.

Here in Tampa, murder sells for about five hundred dollars. At least, that’s the rate for carnies, drug pushers and street people. I don’t know about doctors. But Michael Morgan?  What could anyone have had against him?

I must have pondered too long. Carly rose, pushed her heavy rattan chair back from the table, and walked away. I figured she’d gone to powder her nose. We’d talk when she returned. Hash things out. Decide what to do.

But she didn’t come back.

After ten minutes, I went looking for her. The hostess said Carly left the building. I hurried outside to check the parking lot. No luck. No one around. Not even the valet.

Hustled back into the house, through the restaurant and took the stairs two at a time up to our flat on the second floor. Ran through the den and to the window overlooking the driveway.

Saw Carly’s gray sedan roll over the bridge from Plant Key to Bayshore Boulevard. Turned left, away from downtown, and lost sight of her between the palm trees and traffic.

I stood there a while, staring toward her vanishing point in the swiftly darkening twilight.

“Breathe in, breathe out; breathe in, breathe out,” I repeated to make my hands stop shaking as I slowly descended the stairs.

How like Carly to get herself into disaster and dump it into my lap. I’d been rescuing her from herself most of her life, but this time she may have gotten into more than I could handle.

 For the first time, I noticed bustling activity in the dining room. Temporary staff my husband, George, hired to serve tonight’s fund-raiser worked purposefully.

Carly was gone; I had no idea where. I called her cell, her home, and her office. Left messages. I could do nothing more tonight.

Police Chief Ben Hathaway, along with everyone else who might be interested in Dr. Morgan’s disappearance, would be right here at George’s restaurant for the evening anyway.

Besides, George was so nervous about this party that I had to do my part to make it a success. Rumors claimed Senator and Victoria Warwick, and Elizabeth Taylor, the actress and AIDS activist, might attend.

Dr. Michael Morgan, and Carly’s involvement with him, whatever it was, would have to wait.

If he was already dead, I couldn’t bring him back to life.

Contrary to popular belief, judges know we are not gods.

CHAPTER THREE

Tampa, Florida

Wednesday  5:30 p.m.

January 6, 1999

I drifted back to the Sunset Bar, swallowed my gin and let the watery liquid relax me. The tension was chemically erased from my stomach and the rest of my muscles would feel it soon, too. Along with some heat. The January sun, near the horizon, no longer warmed. How much colder would the Gulf waters be this time of year? Well below comfortable body temperatures, that’s for sure. Hypothermia kills, too.

George emerged from the kitchen, tossing words over his shoulder that I couldn’t hear. He wore his usual uniform: khaki slacks, golf shirt, and kilted cordovan loafers, sans socks. Today, the shirt was bright yellow. It set off his deep tan and dark hair like neon. Despite all the kicking and screaming about leaving Michigan, he’d become a perpetually comfortable Floridian about twenty seconds after we moved here. It’s culturally closer from Grosse Pointe to South Tampa than geography suggests.

He spied me, came over and bestowed a kiss, which I returned more desperately, wanting to feel something solid having nothing to do with cold water, dead doctors, and missing sisters in trouble.

Once released, he said, “Good, you’re home early. Take a quick walk through the dining room to make sure everything’s done?”

“Just sit with me for a minute. I’m sure Peter has everything under control.”

Peter, George’s Maitre‘d, could run the place with his eyes closed. A charity fund-raiser for six hundred people was no great challenge. He’d done it all before.

“I’ve had a crush on Elizabeth Taylor since I first saw
National Velvet
. I want to knock her off her feet.”  He wiggled eyebrows like Groucho Marx to force my smile. He’s not clairvoyant, but seventeen years of marriage have given him a sixth sense of my moods. He knows which buttons to push.

“You act like all this is wildly important to you when you don’t really care whether they have a wonderful time or not,” I teased.

“Every event we have here is important to me.” Then, he relented a little, “Just because I didn’t vote for our democratic senator doesn’t mean I want the
Tribune’s
food critic or the Times’ society pages trashing my party.”