Spring Break

“Some smudged partials,” he said. “No matches in AFIS.”

I considered Adler’s description of the park’s seedy inhabitants. “There’s another possibility. Whoever killed Deirdre could have left her purse untouched, and someone else took her money before the cops came.”

The nerve endings in my skin went into spasms, and I reached into my purse for Benadryl caplets.

“The water fountain’s over there,” Adler said.

I crossed the room, washed down the pills and returned to his desk.

“So—” he dumped the papers from his takeout into the trash “—looks like we’ve narrowed our news photo suspects to Representative Raleigh.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to scratch, “if you don’t count the druggies, vagrants and prostitutes.”

“Let’s be optimistic. Maybe when you talk to Raleigh tonight, he’ll confess and save us a lot of trouble.”

I shook my head. “You know what they say.”

“What?”

“An optimist claims we live in the best possible world, and the pessimist fears it’s true.”

He grinned. “You’ve been at the books again.”

“Not often enough. I’ll see you at the autopsy in the morning.”

Afraid that once I reached home, I wouldn’t drag myself out again, I decided to ignore my grumbling stomach and visit Edward Raleigh before I called it a night.

When he wasn’t in Tallahassee, Raleigh lived on the edge of the golf course at the Osprey Country Club just north of town. I turned off Alternate U.S. 19 into the entrance of the classy subdivision, drove past the clubhouse that bordered Osprey Lake, and wound my way through the curving streets that followed the configuration of the golf course.

With my car windows down, I caught a faint whiff of orange blossoms from trees in the spacious yards. The hundreds of thousands of acres of commercial groves that used to overwhelm the county each spring with their heavy perfume were a thing of the past, victims of population growth and development, and the elusive scent made me nostalgic.

The sun was setting when I arrived at Raleigh’s sprawling Key West style home, and lights blazed through the angled Bermuda shutters on the front windows. A Cadillac with its trunk open was parked in the driveway, and a middle-aged man and woman stood at the rear of the car, holding pieces of luggage. I couldn’t tell if they were leaving or arriving.

I parked in front of the house, and they set down their bags when I left my car and approached them. “Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh?”

“Yes?” the man said.

I showed my ID, clearly legible in the light above the garage door. “I’m Maggie Skerritt.”

“I know you,” Mrs. Raleigh said. “You’re the detective who solved the Lovelace murder back before Christmas.”

“I was a detective. Now I’m a private investigator, and I’m helping the Clearwater Police Department with a case.”

“We can talk inside,” Raleigh said with warm hospitality and a politician’s smile. He probably figured me for a registered voter. “We’ve just returned from a trip to Mobile to visit our grandkids. Our grandson’s first birthday was yesterday. It was quite a celebration.”

“When did you leave Mobile?” I asked.

“Early this morning,” Mrs. Raleigh said. “We drove straight through.”

“If you can verify that, I won’t take any more of your time.”

Raleigh reached into the pocket of his shirt and handed me a slip of paper. “Here’s a credit card receipt for gas when I filled up this morning before we left.”

The service station’s address, time, and date stamp supported his claim. I handed him back his receipt. “Thanks for your help.”

“What’s this about?” his wife asked.

“Just trying to establish a time line on a woman who was searching for a man in a newspaper photo. Your husband was among them, but, if she came here, you obviously weren’t at home.”

I thanked the Raleighs for their time, got into my car and headed home. Apparently, Deirdre hadn’t been killed by any of the men in the photograph. But that didn’t mean that none of them was a suspect in my cold case from Tampa. Tomorrow I’d start digging into old records to see if I could connect one of the men in the photo with the murders I literally itched to solve.

When I arrived home, the message light on my answering machine was blinking. Hoping it was Bill announcing he’d finished his Sarasota assignment and was back on board the Ten-Ninety-Eight, I pushed Play.

Instead of Bill’s deep voice, I heard Caroline’s frantic plea. “Meet me at the hospital. Mother’s had a stroke.”

CHAPTER 4

Pelican Bay Hospital was only a couple of miles from my condo, close to the former police department, now a county sheriff’s substation. During the entire drive, Bill’s recent warning about reconciliation rang in my ears, and I worried that I’d waited too long to mend fences with my mother. If she died before I could speak with her, I would never have the chance to bridge the gap between us. I’d long ago accepted that I didn’t really like my mother, and I’d also given up on gaining her approval, but I loved her, and I hoped I had a chance to tell her so.

I broke a few traffic laws between my place and the hospital, only to waste endless minutes circling acres of parking lots looking for an empty space.

After finally securing a spot on the far edge of a lot, I sprinted toward the emergency entrance. Nearing the building, I met Joe Fenton, a paramedic, who was leaving, and we spoke in passing.

“Hey, Maggie. Long time no see.”

“Hi, Joe,” I said without slowing my stride.

“You can tell it’s spring break.” He smoothed his mustache, which reminded me of a caterpillar. “Just had a drunken college kid take a header off a balcony at the beach.”

“Will he make it?”

Joe shrugged. “You know head injuries. Got another call. Gotta run. Good to see ya.”

Joe swung into the driver’s seat of the ambulance parked at the curb, and I rushed up the brick walkway to the E.R. entrance. The hospital doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and I hurried to the waiting room. I’d no sooner stepped inside than an unkempt woman in a floral patio dress and flip-flops threw herself at me. After extricating myself from her viselike embrace, I was surprised to discover that, instead of a Signal Twenty awaiting admission to the psych ward, the distraught and disheveled greeter was my sister. Her informal clothes, uncombed hair and face devoid of makeup made her appear much older than her fifty-seven years and underscored the seriousness of Mother’s condition.

“I came as soon as I got your message,” I said. “How is she?”

“She’s being evaluated now.”

“What happened?” I led Caroline to a corner of the waiting room less populated than the others and sat on a vinyl-covered sofa beside her.

My usually cool-as-a-cucumber sister wrung her hands. “A little before eight, Estelle went up the bedroom to tell Mother her dinner was ready.”

I nodded. A stickler for propriety, Mother always dressed for dinner and ate in the dining room, even when she dined alone.

“Mother was slumped in her chair, incoherent, unable to move her right arm or leg. Estelle called the paramedics, then me. I got here just as they were bringing Mother in.”

I glanced around the motley assortment of humanity that crowded the waiting room. An elderly couple held hands and watched CNN on the ceiling-mounted television. A young mother and father attempted to comfort a red-faced baby who was crying at the top of his lungs, and two teenage girls took turns talking and giggling on the courtesy phone in the corner opposite us. A man in work clothes sat stoically and cradled his arm, as if it was broken.