Storm Season

“Did the vic live here?” I asked.

Beaton shook his head. “She was from out of town, here to visit relatives for the weekend.”

I looked from the hotel window to the parking lot where the woman had died. “Guess that put a crimp in their holiday plans.”

“You ever see any of the guys from Pelican Bay…” he asked with a hint of nostalgia “…other than Adler and Darcy?”

“Not lately. Seems as if they’ve scattered to the four winds.” Political maneuvering under the guise of saving money had shut down the Pelican Bay Police Department earlier in the year and had left everyone from uniformed officers and detectives to support personnel scrambling for new jobs.

“Me, either. Except for Adler.” Beaton’s face reflected the sadness I felt over the breakup, like a family that had suffered through a nasty divorce. “I’ll move my cruiser,” he said, “so you can park.”

Rudy returned to his car, drove it away from the visitor parking and I pulled into a space.

Within minutes, I was exiting the condo’s elevator onto the penthouse floor, twenty stories above the narrow strip of beach that edged the Gulf of Mexico.

At my knock, a woman with frizzy blond hair, wide gray eyes, stylish gold-framed glasses and tear-splotched cheeks, opened the door.

“Thank God you’re here,” she said. “I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“You told my secretary someone’s trying to kill you?” I glanced past her into the spacious living area and saw no other occupants. “Is everything okay here?”

As a former cop, I’d made my share of calls to sort out domestic disputes, and I didn’t want to be surprised by a Mr. Kimberly Ross jumping out of the woodwork with blood in his eyes.

“No, everything isn’t okay.” Her voice shook with emotion. “The woman who was killed in the parking lot this morning wasn’t the real target. That was supposed to be me.”

CHAPTER 4

Kimberly Ross appeared to be in her early forties, but with her face puffy from crying, I couldn’t accurately judge. She wore designer jeans that revealed her tendency toward pudginess and a gauzy tunic top. Her feet were bare. If she’d applied makeup earlier, her tears had obliterated every trace. Her square jaw and wide brow gave her a somewhat masculine appearance and, under different circumstances, her face could have been pleasant, but fear contorted her features and rolled off her in palpable waves.

“I came as fast as I could,” I assured her in my most soothing tone, hoping to help the woman pull herself together before she lost it completely, because she was teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Why don’t you fill me in on the details?”

“Come in.” Kimberly stepped aside in the marble foyer for me to enter.

I followed her into the expansive living room with a soaring vaulted ceiling and was blown away by the view. Her condo filled the twentieth story, and floor-to-ceiling glass on both ends of the living area presented endless views of the Gulf on the west and a panorama of Clearwater Harbor on the east. The walls and plush carpet were pale lavender, the same tone as the modern upholstered furniture. Throw pillows in pastel pinks, yellows and blues and an oversize oil painting in matching hues above the pink marble fireplace were the only visual relief from the unrelenting lavender. I felt as if I had stepped into a gigantic Easter basket. The only things missing were fake grass and chocolate bunnies.

Kimberly waved me to a chair and curled into the corner of the sofa nearest me. My presence must have eased some of her fears, because she’d calmed somewhat, even though her hands still trembled. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

I nodded. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

“Detective Adler recommended you.”

“You spoke with him?”

“I didn’t know about the murder in the parking lot until he knocked at my door. He said they were questioning everyone in the building, but I hadn’t seen or heard anything.”

“Did you know the victim?”

The muscles of her face flinched, and her lower lip quivered, threatening fresh tears. She nodded. “Sister Mary Theresa, such a sweet woman.”

“Somebody shot a nun?”

Kimberly nodded again and hooked strands of kinky hair behind her ears. “Her parents, Dennis and Eileen Moynihan, live on the second floor. Their daughter was here from Boston for her annual visit. Now they’ll be taking her back to Massachusetts to bury her.”

If Doc Cline and Adler’s theory was correct, the killer had waited in a hotel room next door for his victim. The shooting appeared planned, not random.

“Who’d want to kill a nun?” I asked.

“Nobody. They wanted to kill me, but poor Mary Theresa died instead.”

Hoping to nip her waterworks in the bud, I asked, “Why are you so certain you were the target?”

Kimberly took a deep, shuddering breath. “Mary Theresa and I look enough alike to be twins. Dennis and Eileen were struck by the resemblance the first time I met them when I moved in three years ago. In fact, they call me their other daughter and fuss over me as if we really are related. And, like you said, who’d want to kill a nun?”

“The better question, then, is who would want to kill you?”

She unfolded her legs from beneath her and stood. “Come with me.”

I followed her through the lavender and pastel haze to a set of frosted-glass double doors. She threw them open and motioned me inside the large but windowless room, illuminated by a huge skylight. A customized maple workstation curved around one corner and was topped by a computer, fax machine, printer, scanner and multiline telephone. Bulletin boards above the work area bristled with papers and notes of every size and color, held in place by pushpins. A set of ceiling-high shelves, crammed with books, filled the opposite wall, and tall file cabinets flanked both sides of the workstation.

I was the detective, but I didn’t have a clue. “Someone wants to kill you because you work at home?”

Kimberly brushed past me, picked up a newspaper clipping from the desktop and handed it to me. It was the latest copy of “Ask Wynona Wisdom,” a syndicated advice column that ran in newspapers all over the country. More than simply advice to the lovelorn, the column fielded questions on every aspect of life, from decorating and pet problems to etiquette and family relationships. Wynona Wisdom was an expert on everything, and the reading public had devoured her opinions for more than fifteen years. I’d felt moved on several occasions to write to her concerning my overbearing mother but, so far, had resisted the temptation. A few words on a page couldn’t do justice to the complexity of my maternal parent, a travel agent for guilt trips.

I glanced at the column again, and Wynona’s picture, a thumb-sized cut, stared back at me.

“That’s you,” I said.

“I’m Wynona,” she admitted. “And along with hundreds of letters every day asking for advice, I also receive death threats. I bet Sister Mary Theresa never had a death threat. Hell, she probably never had anyone raise a voice to her. So which one of us do you think is the likeliest candidate to be murdered?”

The woman had a point. “Did you explain all this to Detective Adler?”

Kimberly nodded. “And I told him I needed round-the-clock protection. That’s when he suggested I call you. As soon as the media get hold of Mary Theresa’s identity, the killer will know he missed his target and will come back after me.”

She left her office, closed the doors, and I followed her into the living room. By now the sun was dipping lower in the west, casting blinding light straight through the penthouse. Kimberly pressed a remote control on the table beside the sofa, and sheer lavender draperies swished closed against the glare.

I returned to my chair. “You can’t rule out completely that the nun was the target. Or that the killing was random. Remember the snipers in the Maryland area a few years back? Or, more recently, in Phoenix? They didn’t know their victims. They just shot whoever was handy for the sheer terror it caused.”

“I know.” Kimberly plopped onto the sofa. “But while the police are sorting this out, I don’t want to take a chance.”

“Understood,” I said. “Our firm can arrange to have someone with you 24-7.”

With other clients, I would have mentioned how costly that level of protection would be, but judging from Kimberly’s lucrative profession and lavish penthouse, I figured she could afford it.

“Starting now?” she asked.

“Starting now. Can I use your phone?”

She pointed toward her office. “It’s in there.”