Murder's Last Resort (19 page)

Chapter 58

The jackhammering in my head was abating and I was sitting down with a cup of green tea, when the phone rang. It was Lily. God bless Lily! She of the perfect timing.

“Want to come join me, Lily?” I asked. “I’ve got some news, I just brewed tea and I’m thawing something with a pistachio colored shell.”

“Are you talking Swedish princess cake?” she asked, her voice happy. “I’ll be right there.”

When Lily arrived, she looked at my face but, like the good friend she was, said nothing. I gave her a general outline of Rick’s and my earlier conversation, while we drank our tea and each enjoyed a slice of cake.

When we finished, we tidied up the kitchen and the house felt small. “Come on,” I said, “Let’s walk the nature trail around the lake.” I left a note for Jake and off we went.

After a few minutes of walking and no talking, Lily started gently, “Maya, what are you going to do? Do you have an idea about an attorney? William might know some good people.”

“French didn’t do it,” I said. “He won’t need an attorney.”

She was quiet a moment, probably thinking denial was not just a river in Egypt, and tried again, “But just in case, Maya—you have to start thinking of these things.”

“No, I don’t. You can’t make me,” I answered and gave the wood chips under our feet a stubborn kick.

“Ooh,” she said to herself, as if something hurt.

After a moment, I asked, “Weren’t you the one who told me it was impossible for French to kill anyone?”

“That was before he was conveniently without an alibi every time someone took a ride on a gurney to the coroner’s office.”

“Oh, come on, Lily. You know he’s innocent,” I said, annoyance creeping into my vocal cords.

“I do not,” she said, now taking her life into her hands.

I said nothing. What was the point of arguing with her? She had her opinion and I had mine. Hers was based on what seemed to be facts. Mine was based on feelings, observations and experience. My bias toward French wasn’t blinding me to the truth, was it?

Some flimsy shreds of knowledge, hanging in tatters from the mast of a tall ship, were bobbing above the horizon of my brain. I could pretty much see a face, feel an energy, get a sense of who was to blame for all this death. It was ugly. Morally bankrupt and spiritually ugly. I just couldn’t stitch all those tattered strips together into a whole. Not yet. But I was close.

Poor Lily! She was trying to be realistic and helpful. I softened my responses and we fell into discussing my options. Eventually, we were talked out and walked along together in silence, as friends will, each deep in her own thoughts.

I thought back to Alana Torrey and her ridiculous yet effective disguise as an old man. Were there any celebs that she and Redmund hadn’t known? What a life they had had together. Now, she’d be hoofing it alone. Or would she? As soon as word got out that she was widowed, there would be a long string of suiters camped outside her front door.

I hadn’t had much interaction with Margie Enderly lately. She looked spooked and strange in David’s office. Who wouldn’t look spooked in a situation like that? She was a simple country girl, who was probably out of her depth in the hotel industry on the easiest of days and these weren’t easy days.

And Lauren. She was still doing her job, being Miss PR, trying to make the Manager’s conference seem like the big success it had not been. I thought about Mona Luzi, the dead Messinas and French’s assistant, little Pam, with her shock of red hair and eyes as green as the hills of Cork.

Then I thought of French. It still stung when I thought of him, that idiot. How could he have not come to see me if he was here on Friday night? Maybe his elevator didn’t go to the top floor anymore. Why else would he turn himself in?

Possession was nine tenths of the law and Rick and Tom had possession of French. Maybe he’d been bitten by a Lyme diseased tick at one safe house or another and it had affected his brain. I tried not to think about it.

I looked out over the lake. The sun was hitting it just right. If I blurred my vision, the light, dancing on the water, looked like sparkling crystals of sugar. Dancing. Dancing. Something about the dancing.

Lily was lagging behind me a few steps because she stopped to inspect a lizard, sunning himself on the path. He was missing his tail. I had grown up in lizard country and had held more than a few disconnected lizard tails in my hand as a child. They no longer impressed me, but I still enjoyed the feel of a little lizard in my palm. Their bellies were so soft and smooth, their little hearts beat so fast.

Lizards. No tails. Fast heartbeats. Dancing. Dancing. My thoughts darted and bobbed, as I squinted at the lake when, all at once, I had it. I had it! I stopped dead in my tracks as the coins dropped in my head. Lily, paying no attention, bumped right into me, which brought us both up short.

She mumbled apologies and I told her not to worry about it. I knew who the murderer was, but I wasn’t about to spill the
frijoles.
Talk too much, act too quickly and you were likely to come up with only a lizard tail in your hand.

Chapter 59

From my kitchen window, I watched little Pam almost skipping down my garden path, her shiny red curls bouncing in the Florida sun. Over her left arm was a basket full of mail. I opened the front door before she could ring the bell.

“Hi Pam!” I said.

“Hi, Maya! Mail call.” She unloaded the basket. “Postcard from Dave and Margie,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, I snuck a peek. They’re at the Lodge.”

“No problem, thanks,” I said. She left and bounced back toward the hotel. I looked at the card.

On the front of it was a nice shot of some old fart in waders, holding up a big fat marlin or whatever swam around the waters at the Sapphire Sporting Lodge on Islamorada. Why anyone would leave steaming central Florida, and I didn't mean that in the sexual sense, for the even steamier Florida Keys was a riddle to me, but that’s what Dave and Margie had done. The back of the card stated they were coming back tomorrow night, and wanted a ride home from the airport. Odd, since they could have had livery from the hotel pick them up but, okay, if that’s what they wanted.

There was also a note in the mail from Alana, inviting me to her cottage in Carmel, when the dust was settled. Earlier in the morning, Lily had come by and we played three sets of tennis. One of French’s old buddies from Atlanta called. He was performing on violin in Orlando in a few days and wanted to take us to dinner.

“We might have to take a rain check on that one,” I said.

“Why? I hope nothing is wrong?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “French is on a business trip.” Why should I tell Paolo everything? I didn’t want to spread the word all the way to Atlanta. The word was already all over Orlando. I avoided my usual rounds at the bank, the grocery store, the cafés and other shops I used to frequent. I couldn’t take the looks people were giving me.

Jake called and wanted me to meet him for fish and chips at the twenty-four hour restaurant near the pool for lunch. Mona Luzi called to say she was sorry about French. Her call knocked me out. As far as she knew, French might have killed her husband and
she
was calling
me
to show support? She was either saintly empathic or she didn’t miss her Albanian stallion that much, after all.

My natural inclination was to isolate when I felt low. Contact and invitations from all these people were sweet, but were they lifting my spirits? No. I still wanted to stay in bed with the covers over my head until the world went away.

With French in jail, my life was the pits. Until everything was put right, I was existing, but only going through the motions. Things may have looked okay from the outside, but, on the inside, I was as raw as a banquet-sized portion of carpaccio.

Chapter 60

The following evening, Jake and I were at Orlando International Airport. We took the people mover to the terminal and were waiting at the gate, as happy tourists piled out of the plane. So many, in fact, that I began to think Dave and Margie had missed their flight. At last, I saw them clear the gangway.

They were talking and giggling, their heads so close together that they looked like an ad for Doublemint gum. We greeted them and they recounted with enthusiasm what a wonderful weekend they had enjoyed and why it had seemed like being newlyweds again.

We walked through Parking Lot B and made pleasant small talk as we left the airport. Jake and I sat in the front, with Margie and Dave behind us. Cruising westward on SR-528, we were soon headed north on Interstate 4. We exited westbound on Sand Lake Road and then turned north on Apopka-Vineland Road. As we drove, it was pine forests, an occasional clearing for a housing development, then more pine forests. Alligators lay in the culverts on either side of the roads and I could see their beady little agate eyes in the beams of our headlights, shining atop the water like marbles.

We took Sixth Avenue and turned right onto Main Street, Windermere. Windermere was a small town with its own chain of lakes, making it a desirable homestead for boating and water ski enthusiasts. Jake’s condo was in Windermere, as was Dave and Margie’s home.

Windermere reminded me of Main Street, USA, at Disney. It was old-fashioned and picture postcard perfect. I liked to go to the post office there. It had two mail slots in its lobby. One read, “Windermere.” The other read, “Everywhere Else,” as if Windermere were the center of the world.

As we made our way up Main Street, I knew Dave and Margie were expecting us to turn left on Third Street to get to their home on Pine. Instead, I asked Jake to pull the car into the parking lot of the First Baptist Church.

Jake looked puzzled but didn’t say a word. Dave leaned forward in his seat, fidgety, and looked around.

“Why are we pulling off here?” he asked. Did he sound paranoid or was that my imagination?

“I thought we might have a little chat,” I said.

“A chat? About what?” he asked.

Margie came to life. “What’s going on?” she said, her voice concerned.

“Nothing. It’s about the murders. I thought you might like to know what I was able to find out while you were gone.”

“Okay,” they said in unison. Margie looked relieved but David looked tense.

I turned to face them. “Dave, all along I reckoned that the murderer was either Alana or Mona. They each had strong motives and they were the closest to Redmund and Vacaar. They behaved strangely all along—Alana too calm and collected for a grieving widow. The same thing could be said of Mona, who remained more sequestered, but imagine this—last week, she brought me a little silver brooch she had made for me. I found that noteworthy. Who thinks of bringing gifts to a person when her husband has just been murdered—and in her own Chanel suit and new shoes yet?”

“They were at the top of my mental list, too,” David answered and Margie nodded, her brown, rabbit eyes vacant yet scared.

“No matter how I looked at it, Luzi’s death didn’t make much sense. It wasn’t a power move to gain the presidency of Sapphire, because, technically, Philip Trotter would have been the next in line,” I said.

“That’s true,” Dave said.

“Then I found out, by accident, at the ladies’ ‘color’ day, that Philip and Chloe Trotter were sitting on a big surprise that wouldn’t be announced until July 1. He had been hand-picked by the Weinsteins to run their new airlines acquisition, Brennair.”

Dave looked bitter. He had been passed over, but who did he think he was? He wasn’t ready for a job like that.

On a hunch, I asked, “That didn’t feel good, did it, Dave?”

“You’re damned right.” He raised his voice in answer to my question. “I should have gotten that job. Me. Dave Enderly. I deserved it.”

“Calm down, honey,” Margie said. “You’ll get the next big promotion.”

The sound of her soft voice calmed him.

I waited a moment for him to settle, then continued, “After that, I considered Frankie Messina. He stood to gain a lot, career-wise, with both Torrey and Luzi out of the way. Even though Brett Fitzpatrick was technically next in line for the presidency, he was too old and too much of a party boy to want the hassle. Life was good for Fitz right where he was. He would have happily handed the company over to Frankie and played second fiddle.”

Jake and David both nodded in agreement.

“So, Frankie was my man,” I went on, “but I couldn’t get the goods on him. I saw you, Alana and Linda talking in the gift shop one day and wondered about that. When Linda and I went to the little girls’ room at Papa’s, she said she was worried about Frankie. She was vague. I didn’t question her, but I had the sense it had to do with his outside life. His connections with the mob were always rumored.”

“I know,” Margie piped up out of nowhere, “That man scared me and I always tried to stay away from him.”

“Me, too,” I said. “When Linda was found dead, murdered in the way she was, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, what were the chances that an unrelated murder would happen on our property? But looked at logically, it made sense. What a great time to sneak in a murder and not get caught. It looked like a typical hit—a gangland style execution. No bizarre clothing items were wrapped around Linda’s beautiful, cultured neck.”

“I thought about that, too. I figured Frankie had ticked off someone and this was his punishment,” David replied. “Who knows what trouble he got into with his
paisans
.”

“Exactly!” I said. “When he turned up dead a short while later, I have to confess, I wasn’t exactly surprised.”

Everyone nodded thoughtfully.

Looking at David, I said, “Dave, when we met at Luzi’s, I noticed your suit looked limp and your hair was kinked and frizzy, as if you’d been in a steam bath. My hair does that, too, even if I only stand too near a steaming tea kettle for a few minutes. It made me think back to Luzi’s death. I realized you had been in Luzi’s bathroom before I got to the suite.”

I turned to Margie, “This is going to hurt. I want you to hang in until I’ve finished.”

Like a mouse face to face with a cat, she fixed me with a frightened stare. “Okay, Maya.”

“But Dave,” I said, turning back to him, “what kept going through my mind was how quickly you were at the scene of most of the murders and how often you had to meet with Lauren White.”

David looked down and said nothing.

“Why I was blind to this so long, I don’t know,” I said. “I kept running into Lauren here, there and everywhere. She was her darling self, all high heels and short skirts, silky blond hair and dimpled smiles. Every time I asked her where she was going, she said she was bringing a report to you or conferring with you about something that I eventually realized was not very important.

“It was in Orange 43 that I had the ah-ha moment. I saw you lean into her when her back was to you. Margie stood to your left, but you leaned toward Lauren and you smelled her hair.

“That would have been enough, but what you did next was the real clincher. You inhaled and closed your eyes, lifting your head as you savored the scent. No man smells a girl’s hair like that unless he’s a goner for her.”

He was silent, staring at the dashboard, a strange sheen in his eyes. His lips turned down in a frown.

“It wasn’t much fun to play second fiddle to French and, on a larger stage, to people like Luzi, Messina, Fitzpatrick and even Torrey himself. For a guy like you with big ambitions, it had to be rough, especially when a woman as desirable as Lauren caught your eye.

“Lauren was innocent. She didn’t know she was driving you to murder, Dave. She was being herself—young and high-spirited—when she flirted with you in her come-hither-yet-don’t-touch-me, Southern belle way. Sure, she was flattered and even titillated by your attentions, but she’s a good girl. She’d never consider taking up with a married man. However, a married man might look at her, want her and think of ways to rise to the top and take her with him.”

Dave muttered and looked down at something only he could see.

I continued, “You framed French and then planted the pantyhose box and receipt in his office. It got French out of the way while you were killing people, and you got to be the big man on campus, all the while pretending you were insecure and needy. I bought right into it and did everything I could to reassure you.”

It was getting stuffy in the car. I opened my window. Then I added, “Luzi knew something was up. He wanted to tell me what he knew but, somehow, you got wind of it and invited yourself before I got there. That was the end of him, poor guy.” I hung my right arm out the window, waving my hand to someone unseen outside the car.

Dave, who had gone quiet, snarled like an enraged Rottweiler, and screamed, “You stinking little bitch!” as he lunged at me from the back seat, something nylon stretched between his hands.

It all happened so fast. He wrapped the pantyhose around my throat and pulled it tight, while I tugged frantically, trying to loosen it, unable to breath. David tightened the hose around his fists, increasing his choke hold. Jake erupted across the seat and, in one smooth motion, smashed David’s face with a forceful left hook. I heard the bones in David’s nose crunch, and blood splattered onto me, as he flew backwards against the rear seat. I heard a scream that rocked the car, though I don’t think anyone noticed. It was mine.

Jake was pummeling David when Margie let out her own eardrum-shattering scream, tore open the left passenger door, and ran from the car. She careened and stumbled through the parking lot, screeching and squealing the whole while, like a pig at slaughter. Her man was a murderer; fists and blood were flying. On some level, she must have realized she was next on David’s hit list. It was all too much for her.

Within seconds, six squad cars, with their lights flashing and sirens wailing, pulled into the parking lot and surrounded our car. Rick and his men ran toward us with their guns drawn. Rick threw open the right rear passenger door and yanked David out by his hair, dragging him onto the asphalt and smashing his neck against the ground with his boot. In moments, twelve Magnums were pointed at his bloody face.

I had spoken to Rick late Sunday night. When the post card from Dave and Margie arrived, Rick and I hatched a plan. Jake and I would pick up the two lovebirds and bring them to the Baptist Church parking lot in Windermere. Rick, Tom and their men would be in place, waiting for us, hidden amongst the pines that surrounded the lot, with their engines idling and their lights turned off, ready to jump in when I gave them the signal.