Orchid Beach (13 page)
Holly held up both hands. “Please, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bone of contention in this council, so just let me state my position, and then I’ll leave you to get on with your deliberations.”
“Please do,” Charlie Peterson said.
“I’ve been hired to do a job here. It’s one I’m well qualified for and one I intend to do. If I ever feel that I can’t handle it for any reason, I’ll come to you and resign, I promise you that. With regard to the shooting of Chief Marley, I can tell you that every resource of this department is being deployed to find and arrest the perpetrator. I would remind you that, if I resigned today, the same people would still be investigating that crime. Now, if you have any questions of me, about my background or my intentions, I’ll be glad to answer them right now.”
There was silence for a while, finally broken by John Westover. “Holly, welcome aboard,” he said. “If any of us can be of any help to you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Holly smiled sweetly. “Thank you all so much.”
B
ack at her desk, Holly called in Hurd Wallace and Bob Hurst. “I want to bring you up to date on something,” she said. “I interviewed Sam Sweeney yesterday, and he eventually admitted that he heard the shot that hit Chief Marley, a single shot.”
Hurst spoke up. “I went over all that very thoroughly with him several times, and he didn’t tell me that.”
“Maybe he felt less threatened after having been released,” Holly said. “He also told me that he heard heated arguing before the shot was fired, from two or three men, and that, after the shot was fired, he heard two car doors slam, indicating two perps. He said the car—not a truck or large vehicle—made a U-turn and drove north on A1A.”
“What else did he say?”
“That was it. I thought you should both have his information for your investigation.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Hurst said, but he was looking embarrassed for not having produced it himself.
“Is anybody getting anything?”
“Not a thing,” Wallace said. “I’ve interviewed every street officer, and there’s just nothing.”
Hurst spoke up. “I think the reason for that is that this was some sort of isolated incident, not connected to any other criminal activitiy that our snitches might know about. Everything points to it being a stopping of a vehicle that went wrong—speeding, drunk driving, broken taillight, suspicious activity—something like that.”
Holly didn’t believe that for a moment, but then she knew a little more than Hurst did. “That would seem to cover the events,” she said. “Except for the fact of Hank Doherty’s murder.”
Neither of the men said anything.
“Whoever shot the chief took his shotgun from his car, went straight to Hank Doherty’s and killed him.”
“We don’t know that,” Wallace said.
“Can you think of any other scenario that works?”
“You’re right, Chief,” Hurst said. “She’s right, Hurd; the two shootings are connected by the shotgun.”
“Anything new on the chief’s condition?” Wallace asked, changing the subject.
Holly quickly decided to tell them. “The chief woke up yesterday and started talking.”
Two sets of eyebrows went up. “Did he say who shot him? Anything at all?” Hurst asked.
“He remembered nothing about the incident or anything that had occurred for a good five weeks before it. His last memory was of meeting with me, on the occasion when he hired me to come here.”
“Any chance he’ll regain some of that memory?” Wallace asked.
“The news gets worse, I’m afraid. He went to sleep while I was there, and this morning, the nurses couldn’t wake him. He’s back in a coma, and the doctor can’t offer any real prognosis.”
Wallace nodded. “For a minute there I thought we’d had a break.”
“So did I,” Holly said, “but we’re going to have to solve this crime without the chief’s help. The odds of his waking up and remembering everything have gotten a lot worse. Although the doctor hasn’t actually said so, my feeling was that he didn’t expect him to recover.” She watched the two men carefully for their reactions, and they were what she would have expected—sadness and worry on the part of Hurst, and the usual lack of emotion on the part of Wallace.
“Where do we go from here?” Hurst asked.
“We start again from the beginning,” Holly said. “I want you to visit the crime scene again and, this time, work both sides of the road. When they made the U-turn, they could have thrown something out. Check out Hank Doherty’s again, too; see if we missed anything.”
“I’ll talk to Sweeney again, too,” Hurst said, sounding annoyed that the man hadn’t given up all his information the first time around.
“I think Mr. Sweeney has left us,” Holly said. “Anyway, he told me that was his intention.”
“You know where?”
“Where does a guy like Sweeney go? Anywhere, I should think.”
“I could get the state police to put out a watch for him.”
“What for? We can’t charge him with anything, and I really believe he’s told us all he knows.”
Hurst shrugged. “I guess you’re right.”
“Tell you what you can do,” Holly said. “Put out a bulletin on Sweeney’s Colt thirty-two—the serial number will be on the receipt that guy Schwartz produced in court; the county attorney will have that. Maybe somebody sold it and we can trace it back.”
“I’ll do that,” Wallace said.
“Good. Now let’s all get back to work.”
The two officers left, and Holly, mindful of what the council had said about her lack of knowledge of the town, decided to see more of it. She went next door to Jane Grey’s office. “I’ll be on patrol for a while,” she said. “Let the dispatcher know I’m in the car, okay?”
“Sure. How’d it go with the council?”
Holly closed the door. “They had voted, three to two, to make Hurd acting chief,” she said. “But Charlie Peterson, who I didn’t know was a lawyer, read them the riot act about my contract, and they calmed down and accepted the situation.”
“Hurd’s close to John Westover,” Jane said. “That’s where that came from. And the other councilman to vote against Westover would have been Howard Goldman, I think.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Howard’s sometimes the swing vote; he goes with Westover most of the time, but occasionally opposes him.”
“Good to know,” Holly said. “I got the impression that Irma Taggert is solid with Westover.”
“That’s right, and she’s a prig, as well. She’s always wanting to shut down the movie house if something racy is
running. Even Westover won’t go with her on that.”
“What about the other guy?”
“Frank Hessian? He’s a cipher. Rarely says anything to anybody, doesn’t make waves.”
“How’d he get elected?”
“He’s a nice man, and everybody knows it. He’s a veterinarian. Everybody takes their pets to him.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later.” Holly left the station and decided to drive north on A1A. She hadn’t seen much of the high-rent district yet, and she wanted a look at it.
H
olly drove north on A1A, with Daisy in the front seat beside her. Gradually, the town gave way to a kind of suburbia, studded with the gates of upscale subdivisions. She turned into the first one she came to. There was a guardhouse, empty, and a keypad-operated gate, open. She drove down a typical upper-middle-class street, lined with roomy but unpretentious houses on half-acre lots. There were a pair of tennis courts at the end of the block, apparently serving the whole neighborhood. At a T junction, a cross street ran parallel with the beach, and the houses on the ocean were larger and sited on more land. Visits to two more such subdivisions revealed a similar layout. Daisy lost interest, curled up and went to sleep.
As she drove north the subdivisions grew in size, and one or two of them had an actual guard posted in the gatehouse, who waved her in when they saw her police uniform. In these neighborhoods, the lots were an acre or more
and the houses more elaborate, some with white columns out front and circular driveways. Here the tennis courts were behind individual houses, and the beach houses were well into the million-dollar bracket, she reckoned.
She continued north and came to a state park, which turned out to be nothing more than a beach with a parking lot and rest rooms. Back on the road, the subdivisions were becoming more spectacular. She visited one, the reason for which seemed to be polo, and there were actually people on horseback swinging mallets at balls. “We’re in the two-million-dollar category now,” she said aloud to herself.
She drove all the way up to the Sebastian Inlet, where the river emptied into the sea under a large bridge; then she turned around and started south toward town. Now she visited subdivisions on the river side of the islands, most of which had marinas and golf courses, sometimes more than one. She thought of her father and how he loved his golf. She had played with him a lot and enjoyed it, but she had been working too hard to have the time to play often. Nothing had changed in that regard.
Now she came to a subdivision that was different from the others in several respects. It was larger, if the length of the twenty-foot-high hedge along the road was any indication; there was more than a mile of it before and after the main gate. Behind the guardhouse, she saw as she turned off the road, the interior of the development was shielded from the main road by an equally high hedge. The place was visually sealed off from the rest of Orchid Beach. There was a live guard at work, too, and this one was armed, the first time she’d seen that. She pulled to a stop next to the guardhouse. Ahead of her was an electrically operated wrought-iron barrier, and a few feet beyond that, steel claws erupted from
the pavement. Anybody attempting to crash the gate would quickly lose all his tires to that contraption.
“Good afternoon,” she said to the guard.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“I’m Deputy Chief Holly Barker from the Orchid Beach Police Department,” she said. “I’d like to take a look around inside. I’m new and just getting to know the territory.”
“Sorry, miss,” he said, avoiding using her rank. “Residents only.”
“I don’t think you understand,” she said. “I’m a police officer, and this development is in my jurisdiction.”
“Sorry, no one is allowed inside without a resident’s sticker or an employee’s badge.”
“Who is your chief?” she asked.
“Captain Noble,” he said.
“Get him on the phone.”
The man looked at her for a moment. He was large, muscular and very fit looking. His uniform fit him like a glove, and he looked capable of handling anything that might come along. He picked up a phone and, turning his back on Holly, spoke into it, then hung up. “Captain Noble will come down and speak to you,” he said. “Pull right over there and park your car.” He indicated a parking spot a few yards away.
Holly parked her car and got out, stretching her legs. Daisy sat up and looked around, then lay down and curled up again. Nothing happened. She waited five minutes, then walked over to the guardhouse. “So where is he?”
“On his way, miss.”
As she was about to turn away, she glanced down and through the open door, saw an Armalite assault rifle in a rack under the countertop where the guard sat. She was
about to mention it when the exit gate opened. A white Range Rover pulled out, made a U-turn and stopped at the guardhouse. On each front door of the vehicle was painted a symbol, a palmetto plant.
“You’re Deputy Chief Barker?” the driver asked.
“That’s right,” Holly replied.
“I’m Barney Noble,” the man said, smiling and sticking his hand out the window. “I run the security operation at Palmetto Gardens.”
Holly shook the hand, which was hard and cool. “Good to meet you. I was just driving around, getting to know the area, and I thought I’d take a look at Palmetto Gardens. Little did I know,” she said, indicating the guard.
Barney Noble grinned. “I run a pretty tight ship,” he said. “Hop in, and I’ll show you around.”
“Just a minute,” she said. Holly walked over to her car and said to Daisy. “Stay, Daisy. Guard the car.” She made sure the car was well ventilated, then she walked back to the Range Rover and got in. The gate ahead of them opened, the steel claws retracted into the pavement and the car moved forward.
“Welcome to Orchid,” Noble said. “I’d heard you’d arrived in town.”
“Yes, just last weekend.”
“How’s Chet Marley doing?”
“Not well,” she said. “He’s still in a coma.”
“I heard he came out of it,” Noble said.
That was interesting to Holly. How did he know that? “For a few minutes, then he went under again.”
“Sorry to hear it. Chet’s a good man. We played a little poker once in a while.”
They had passed the barrier hedge now, and the land
scape opened up in a wonderful way. They were driving along the shore of a large lake on one side of the road and a golf course on the other.
“This is beautiful,” Holly said.
“Just between you and me, it’s the most beautiful real estate development in Florida, and I’ve seen most of them in my line of work.”
“Why have I never heard of it?” she asked.
“The folks who live here like to lead a quiet life. They’re among the richer people in this country—CEOs of large corporations, heads of conglomerates, billionaires of every stripe. It’s a private club, really; we don’t advertise for customers. It’s all word of mouth among friends. You’d recognize a lot of the names of the members, but I’m not allowed to mention them.”
“What sort of security force do you have?”
“I’ve got fifteen men—twelve usually on duty or on call—there’s always somebody on vacation or out sick or something.”
“Are they all armed?” she asked.
“All armed and very well trained to use their weapons,” he replied. “We’ve got our own firing range back in the woods there.” He waved a hand vaguely to his right.