Spring Break

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 1

Darcy Wilkins skidded into my office early Monday morning and closed the door. I looked up in alarm. Darcy, in all her years as a police dispatcher, had never lost her cool. And in the few weeks she’d served as receptionist for Pelican Bay Investigations, she’d been a model of efficiency and decorum. Today, however, she had the wild and crazy look of a die-hard rock ’n’ roll fan who had just sighted Elvis, alive and well.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Maggie.” Her voice was breathless, her brown cheeks flushed, her eyes wide and bright. “You’ll never guess who’s asking to see you.”

Why people tell you that you can’t do something, then wait for you to do it, I’ve never understood. “Okay, I give up.”

“Jolene Jernigan!”

I drew a total blank.

Darcy must have guessed by the look on my face. “You don’t know who she is.”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“You don’t watch daytime television?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Darcy shook her head. “Jolene Jernigan has been the star of Heartbeats for more than forty years.”

“Heartbeats? Is that a fitness show?”

I’d once caught Caroline, my older sister, sweating to the oldies with Richard Simmons, but I’d never heard of Jolene Jernigan.

Darcy looked at me as if I’d been raised in a barn. “It’s the number-one soap opera on television. I watched it every day when I worked night shifts. Now that I’m working days, I have to record it.”

“So what’s this Jolene doing in Florida? Aren’t soaps broadcast live from either New York or L.A.?”

“Her character’s in a coma with her face bandaged because of an auto accident. Maybe she has a stand-in for a while.”

“Did Jolene say why she’s here in Pelican Bay?”

Darcy shook her head and made a tsking noise.

“For a detective, you don’t know much. She owns a fabulous vacation home on Pelican Beach.”

“And she wants to see me?”

“She says it’s urgent.”

I glanced at my bare desktop and my day planner devoid of appointments. “I suppose I can work her in.”

“Don’t forget to ask for an advance.” Darcy ducked out the door.

She was right to remind me. After twenty-two years as a police officer, I wasn’t yet accustomed to the business details of running a private investigation firm. I preferred that Bill Malcolm, my fiancé and partner in crime, so to speak, handle money matters, but he was in Sarasota on another case.

Through the open windows of our recently acquired second-floor office, I could hear the traffic idling on Main Street as it backed up from the causeway to the beach. The April breeze carried the scent of confederate jasmine and sweet viburnum tinged with car-exhaust fumes. The town had more visitors than you could stir with a stick, and half of them were young, horny and slightly inebriated. I recalled reading a complaint the British had made about American troops during World War II: overpaid, oversexed and over here. Apply that to these college kids and you had spring break in Pelican Bay in a nutshell.

Darcy returned, opened the door to my office and stood aside for Jolene to enter.

With luxuriant long brown hair, huge Italian sunglasses, and a tall, gaunt figure, the result of either good genes or semistarvation, the woman was a dead ringer for the late Jackie O. The cut and quality of her linen slacks, cashmere sweater and matching sandals would have made my sister, a world-class shopper, drool.

Darcy gestured to a leather club chair in front of my desk and, once Jolene was seated, asked if she wanted coffee.

The actress shook her head, and Darcy, looking as if she’d give her eyeteeth to stay and hear the woman’s story, reluctantly withdrew.

“I’m Maggie Skerritt. What brings you here, Ms. Jernigan?”

“The Internet.”

I swallowed my disappointment. If she needed cyber-snooping, she’d come to the wrong place. I was as technophobic as they came and had to hire a computer specialist in Clearwater to do my Web surfing.

“I need a private eye,” she continued, “and your firm is the closest one listed on the Web.” Her voice was low and husky, as if she’d been crying.

“Why do you need an investigator?” I’d get to the harder questions later.

She drew a deep shuddering breath. “My baby’s been kidnapped.”

“Your baby?” Recently turned forty-nine, I was no spring chicken, and Jolene had at least fifteen years on me. For her, childbearing age had to be a dim, distant memory. But she’d said baby, so maybe she’d adopted.

“Roger.” She muffled a sob and fumbled in her purse for a tissue. “He’s only three.”

Now she had my complete attention. “Have you notified the authorities?”

Her head snapped up, and I could feel the intensity of her gaze behind her dark glasses. “Are you crazy? And have it splashed all over the news?”

“Were you threatened?”

“Huh?”

“Did the kidnappers say they’d harm your baby if you went to the police?”

She shook her head. “No, I just don’t want the bad publicity.”

Jolene Jernigan was either the dumbest woman I’d ever met or I’d missed something. Or both. “Do you have any idea who might have taken your child?”

“Who said anything about a child? Roger’s my dog, an adorable pug.”