SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (14 page)

The wind had risen. She could hear cabbage palms and cedars scrape against the old building like forgotten ghosts. Sleep came in fragments, each haunted by a fragile Cara Waters. Once Brandy woke to a shuffling sound in the hall. She heard a soft rap on the door and a rattle of the latch. Nathan Hunt? She sat up and stared. But the chain stayed in place, and she left it there.

CHAPTER 11
 

In the morning Brandy tapped out on the lap top a brief story about the few facts Detective Strong had released. She would call the department before she left to see if any others had emerged. The Halloween feature could wait until later. Maybe Cara’s Shell Mound picture would add bite to the familiar legend.

At breakfast she was relieved to hear that Hunt had left for the marina at the town of Suwannee, and that the tropical storm was still stalled off Naples. She expected Cara to be pleased, yet her friend was zipping among the tables with a tight look around her mouth. After Brandy finished her herbed eggs and muffin, Cara cleared the table with a wan smile. “Marcia wants to see you. She drove me to work this morning, and I’m afraid she’s waiting in the lobby to dump a guilt trip on you.” Cara lowered her voice. “I’m sorry, but for a long time I’ve thought she knows more than she’s told me. I stepped into her bedroom this morning to tell her I was ready.” She sighed. “I’d swear she was hiding something.”

This is a time to be assertive, Brandy thought, standing. “I’ll talk to her.”

When she entered the lobby, Brandy saw Marcia Waters seated beside the coffee table, staring out at the quiet street. Brandy lifted her chin and took a seat across from her. “Cara said you wanted to see me.”

Marcia kept her long hands in her lap, her eyes on Brandy. She wore an ankle length denim skirt and a man’s white shirt with a paint smear on one pocket. Several strands of gray hair had escaped the firm bun at the nape of her neck.

“I’m here about Cara.” She paused to control a slight quiver in her voice. “I know you’re trying to find out if that investigator knew who Cara’s parents were.” Her fingers crept up to the corner of her mouth. “The fact is, you’re upsetting Cara, giving her false hopes. All for a newspaper story. The woman the man was looking for probably had no connection to Cara.”

Brandy nodded. “Maybe that’s what I’ll find. Cara just wants the truth, but there’s another reason to investigate. Mr. Rossi said the woman’s daughter had money coming to her. If we can prove Cara’s her daughter, Cara may be able to pay for college herself. Is there anything else, anything at all, you know about Cara’s past that would help us?”

A look of anguish flickered for a second in the artist’s eyes. “Cara can’t find happiness by leaving Cedar Key. She’s loved here. She does important work here. She can grow in her chosen profession here.” Her hands clasped again “Fact is, you can’t know what you’ll find. Suppose one of her parents is a criminal?” She stood, her thin body very straight, and it seemed to Brandy, very vulnerable. “They abandoned her, Miss O’Bannon. I’ll thank you to leave my family as you found it.”

Brandy rose and stretched out her hand to the artist. Behind her she could see the counter clerk, head bent over the morning
Beacon,
listening. A page had not turned since Marcia began talking.

“Please understand,” Brandy said. “Cara asked for my help. She’s a grown woman. She has a right to make this search, and I have a right to cover the story my editor assigned.” When Marcia ignored her hand, Brandy dropped it. “Whatever I find, Cara will always love you as her mother.”

Marcia pivoted on her heel, then glanced back. “I understand my daughter’s driving you to Gainesville today and picking you up on Wednesday about noon. I hope you don’t plan to return to Cedar Key. We don’t need more of your kind of help.”

With regret Brandy watched her sweep out of the lobby. She admired Marcia Waters, admired her dramatic watercolors, her bird sanctuary, her concern for the environment. But she had lost any expectation of her friendship. She only hoped Marcia’s hostility was caused by love for her daughter, not by fear.

As the artist strode down the sidewalk toward the art gallery, Brandy stepped once more into the phone booth. Once more the answering machine clicked on and she listened to John’s flat voice inviting her to leave a message. Could he be walking Meg? Unlikely. He would keep her in the fenced yard. If he were outside looking for the Sunday paper, would he think to check the answering machine? Could he have gone to the office on Sunday before nine-thirty?

“I’ll be in Manhattan Monday and Tuesday at my old friend Thea Ridge’s apartment,” she said when the beeps stopped. “I’ll call.” She left Thea’s phone number, but she was thinking not of Thea but of Tiffany—the artful tangle of her hair and her mini-skirt. When John’s boss suggested interns should dress more conservatively, John had laughed. “He’s so old fashioned,” he joked at the table over Brandy’s homemade shepherd’s pie, while she watched images of Tiffany and her unusually white skin float among the lamb and mashed potatoes. His protege’s saucer-shaped eyes went wide with admiration every time John spoke. Brandy had seen that phenomenon at the office picnic, and once a neighbor had told her, oh, so helpfully, that she sometimes saw John lunching at the mall with Tiffany. If that happened when Brandy was in town, what went on when she was gone?

And Tiffany Moore lived alone.

Brandy slammed down the receiver. Coming out of the booth, she met the clerk’s eye. “I’m expecting a call from my husband. If he phones before I check out, please let me know.”

The clerk’s half-smile, Brandy thought savagely, could be called a smirk. “Check-out time’s, you know, at noon,” the young woman said.

Upstairs Brandy had begun throwing clothes into her suitcase, when she heard a knock at the door, this time one with authority. She opened to the imposing figure of Detective Jeremiah Strong.

“We need a fuller statement from you, Ma’am,” he said, stepping back, “and I need to know how to reach your husband.”

Brandy checked her watch. “Fair enough. Then I’m out of here.”

While Strong carried her bag downstairs and into a small room between MacGill’s apartment and the bar, she followed with her lap top and notebook, glad she had jotted down all the details she could remember. The detective directed her into one of two cane chairs and swung the other around to sit facing her, his spiral note pad braced on the ladder back. As she flipped to her Rossi entry, he raised an eyebrow at the loose pages, the smeary scribble, the doodling in the margins of oak trees and boats and lately, of Marcia Water’s predatory owls. But he took notes as she read aloud every remark she had heard from or about Rossi. She ended by giving him John’s office number, as well as the one at home.

“Got a positive ID this morning,” he said, “and you can give your newspaper the Shell Mound location, say he was staying at the hotel here. But no details about the body or the burial.” He looked down, a bit sheepish. “Reckon I ought to thank you for the cemetery tip.”

“The murder scene?”

He nodded. “Could be. Metal detector turned up a coupla cartridge casings. Ophthalmologist in Chiefland’s gonna check out the glass fragments we found there, see if they match the victim’s glasses. Tire tracks look like those at Shell Mound. Don’t help us identify the killer, anyhow. The vehicle was the victim’s rental car.”

Brandy reached for a pencil. “You’re saying someone killed Rossi, buried the body, then came back and ran the car into the Gulf?”

Strong nodded again. “Guess the perp thought fresh digging would show up in the graveyard, but not in a hidden spot off the park trail.

He didn’t figure on your dog.” He put his note pad in his pocket, stood, and swiveled the chair back in place. “But that fact’s still off the record. I’m not giving out details ‘til we’ve got a suspect.”

Brandy tapped the pencil on the blank page. “Only one set of tire tracks in the cemetery? Rossi must’ve gone there with the killer. Rossi must’ve known him—or her. But why the cemetery?

A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “A nice quiet place. Fits my drug scenario. Most likely a deal gone sour.”

She paused, remembering something else. “Shell Mound dirt should be full of shell fragments. Is the spade being tested?”

He flashed one of his broad white smiles. “You don’t miss much, Ma’am. But the spade’s not a lot of help, either. Several folks say it belongs to the hotel, but there’s no fingerprints.”

“Still, it might give the crime a local connection. If the spade checks out, it means the killer knew where it was kept. Besides who besides the killer would be using a spade in the middle of the night? Handle’s probably wiped clean. Otherwise you’d have the yard man’s prints.” She cocked her head. “Found the weapon yet?”

Strong shook his head as Brandy snapped the notebook shut and stood. She hesitated at the lounge door. “I should tell you I’m going to New York tomorrow. I want to find out what Rossi knew when he placed that classified ad.”

The dark brows converged. “No law against it, I guess. I been in touch with New York P.D. They’ll seal the victim’s records. Come down to it, I reckon I’ll go up there soon myself. Check out the drug connection.”

As Brandy stepped into the deserted bar, he followed, then halted and faced her. “Ma’am, I’ll tell you again. Best leave the investigation to law enforcement. You heading for a peck of trouble. Whatever Rossi knew, got him killed. The Bible say, ‘The evil is sown, but the destruction thereof is not yet done.’” He winked and slid past her.

I’m never quite sure what the detective means, she thought. Was he winking to make me feel better about the scolding? Or to say he knows

I’ll do whatever’s necessary to get the story? Or to emphasize his warning. Detective Jeremiah Strong was a puzzle.

At the desk she stopped to offer her credit card and keys and saw a note in her box. The clerk handed Brandy the slip. “Your husband called. Says he’ll be out of the office today.”

Brandy glanced at the clerk’s neat handwriting. “Mr. Able will be with a client on the job site most of the day. He got your message.”

Brandy crumpled up the paper. “I asked you to call me. You saw where I went.”

The clerk gave a righteous lift to her head. “I never interrupt anyone in Mr. MacGill’s conference room, know what I mean?”

Another murder wouldn’t solve the problem, Brandy thought, tempted as she was. She jotted down Thea’s name and phone number. “If he calls again, be sure he knows how to reach me at my friend’s apartment tomorrow.”

By one o’clock Brandy had modemed more of the Rossi story to the bureau and alerted Betsy Mae Terry to expect her in about an hour. She and MacGill were discussing her historic preservation column on the lobby bulletin board when Cara’s station wagon pulled up before the hotel. An almost jovial MacGill carried Brandy’s suitcase through the front doors, saying, “Mind, I always treat the press with respect. Last night I felt like I’d been pulled through a ditch backwards, but no one’s canceled yet and I’ve gotten a couple of new reservations. Maybe the poor lad’s murder actually helped. Vulgar curiosity, most like.” He set her bag in the back of the wagon. “Girl at the desk tells me you’ll be getting back from New York around noon Wednesday. Your husband to meet you?”

The clerk has a real talent for eavesdropping, Brandy thought, laying her lap top and camera beside the bag. “Couldn’t reach him. Cara can pick me up.”

MacGill nodded. “You’ll want to see her anyway, I shouldn’t wonder. See if she got a snapshot of your man digging Rossi’s grave.” He slammed the hatch and leaned toward her. “Take no notice of Marcia.”

The clerk again, Brandy supposed, reporting her conversation with Marcia Waters. The Cedar Key network didn’t permit much privacy. “Our Cara’s got no business working at what’s really a skivvy’s job. She deserves better.” He stepped back on the curb beside a tourist couple unloading their car and waved Cara away.

Enroute to the cashier interview, they stopped in Bronson where, over a fast food pizza, Brandy explained her plan. “Our first step is to identify the woman Rossi was searching for. He said he knew her name. Once we have that information, the medical examiner can compare that woman’s dental records with the basement skeleton’s teeth. Even the skull size and shape tell a lot. Murder cases stay open, you know. I’m sure the police would like to close this one.”

Cara wrinkled her forehead. “Then I’d still have to prove I was that woman’s child.”

“That would certainly be easier if we knew the woman’s name.”

“What Mother—Marcia—can’t understand is that I need to know if my real mother abandoned me—if she walked off and left me out in a storm. That’s a terrible thought to live with.”

“And it would be better to know she’d been murdered?”

Cara stared at her plate, dark hair half hiding her face. “In a way, for me, yes.”

Outside the town of Williston, they spotted the sign for Green Valley Haven between a gas station and a feed store. Cara threaded the station wagon through a labyrinth of narrow streets, until they found Betsy Mae Terry’s trailer. She parked beside an aluminum carport and a neat square of lawn.

“You might as well come with me,” Brandy said. “Listen for any fact that isn’t in the old newspaper story.”

The door was opened by a stout woman of about seventy with severely bobbed white hair. She wore a polyester pants suit and house slippers. In her arms squirmed a noisy Pomeranian, whose staccato yip-ping drowned out her first remarks. The tiny living room smelled of dog.

Once her guests were settled on the worn couch, Betsy Mae lowered herself into an over-stuffed chair opposite them and stroked her pet’s silky coat until the little animal quieted.

“Cara Waters is with me today,” Brandy began. “She lives in Cedar Key and has a special interest in your story. I’m writing an article about the child who was left in Cedar Key during the 1972 hurricane, alone.” Cara sat forward, her eyes fixed on Betsy Mae Terry as if the elderly woman were her best chance for information. “The child’s parents have never been located,” Brandy went on. “Now there’s another inquiry about a woman who came to town just before Hurricane Agnes. I’ve seen the newspaper account of your testimony in the lost child case.”