Charlotte Douglas - Spring Break

“You have to make the first move,” Bill said.

“I’ve been moving. I sent her a Christmas gift, and I’ve called several times. But Estelle—” Mother’s housekeeper “—always says that Mother is out or asleep or unavailable.”

“Priscilla’s not getting any younger. You’d better mend your fences while you can.”

“I would if I knew how. Mother’s never liked me, and I haven’t a clue why.” The shrinks would have a field day with me, pushing fifty and still at odds with my mother. “She never approved of my career in law enforcement, but her dislike started long before that. Even as a child, I relied on Daddy to run interference between us. I wish Daddy were alive now.”

“Try sending flowers.”

I considered his suggestion. “A few dozen roses and crawling from here to her place on my bare knees might do the trick.”

“Just don’t wait too long,” Bill warned.

He spoke from experience. His only surviving parent, his father, resided in an Alzheimer’s facility in Tampa, and hadn’t recognized Bill for the past few months.

“Can we talk about something cheerful?” I asked.

“How about dessert?”

“Great. Tiramisu always makes me smile.”

Bill gathered dishes to carry inside. “I’ll have to hit the sack soon. I want to get up early to beat rush-hour traffic when I return to Sarasota.”

My tiramisu smile widened. Good food, great wine, my favorite dessert and early to bed with the man I loved. It didn’t get any better than that.

With both the dog and my dognapping suspect in the wind, I was back at the office early Tuesday morning, calling boarding kennels and polishing off a double vanilla latte and a fresh cruller from the bookstore coffee shop downstairs, when Dave Adler sauntered in.

Adler had been my partner before the Pelican Bay Police Department went belly-up, and I’d developed a maternal attachment to the bright young guy. I considered him the son I’d never had and also held a special affection for his wife Sharon and daughter Jessica, an adorable toddler fast approaching the terrible twos. Ironically, I felt closer to the Adlers than to my own family.

“What happened?” I asked. “The Clearwater PD finally give you a day off?”

This was his first visit to our new office, and he was glancing with interest around the spacious, high-ceilinged room with its tall windows that overlooked downtown with its quaint shops, the marina and the waters of Pelican Bay. “Nice digs, Maggie. How’s the P.I. business?”

I shrugged. “Bill and I are staying busy. He’s working background checks in Sarasota this week. He’ll be sorry he missed you. How’s the job treating you?”

His confident, cocky attitude faded, and his handsome face sobered. “I need your help.”

“You got it.”

“We found a DOA at Crest Lake Park before dawn this morning, shot sometime last night with a small-caliber gun.”

The mere mention of murder made my skin itch. “You’ve worked your share of homicides. Why do you need me?”

He pulled at his earlobe, barely visible beneath his shaggy sandy hair, and scowled. “There were only two items found in her purse besides her driver’s license and wallet. The first was a slip of paper with your name and address on it.”

My skin irritation increased as I wondered whether I’d known his victim. Probably just a prospective client, I assured myself, not someone I actually knew. “What was her name?”

“Deirdre Fisk.”

“My God.” I sank back in my chair and struggled to catch my breath. “I haven’t heard that name in sixteen years.”

Memories assaulted me, images of pale, bloated bodies on the medical examiner’s table, young girls not yet in their teens, who’d been sexually abused, strangled and dumped into Tampa Bay.

“How did you know her?” Adler folded his tall frame into the chair across from my desk and waited.

I took a sip of coffee. “Deirdre Fisk was the lucky one.”

“Not last night.”

“Remember the cases I told you about, the child murders Bill and I worked more than sixteen years ago when we were partners on the Tampa PD?”

Adler nodded.

“Deirdre Fisk was only nine years old then. She was abducted by the man we assumed was our killer and taken to a mangrove on the Tampa causeway. She probably would have been murdered like the other three victims, except a couple of guys fishing a few yards offshore heard her screams. They started the motor on their boat and headed for the beach. At their approach, her abductor shoved her out of his vehicle and took off.”

“Did she ID him?”

I shook my head. “You know how kids are. She described him as an old man, which could have meant anybody over twenty. And driving a big white car. She didn’t know the make or model. The fishermen saw only taillights as the man made his escape.”

“So the guy was never caught?”

“The close call either scared him off—unlikely, since sexual predators can’t control their impulses—or, more likely, he moved away, or was arrested and imprisoned for some other crime, or died. Whatever the reason, the child killings stopped, and Bill and I never caught our perp.”

Adler pointed to the hives I was scratching on my forearms. “That’s when those started?”

“My allergy to murder?” I nodded. “That’s also when I left the Tampa PD and moved home to Pelican Bay. I thought working at the department here would cut down on my homicide cases.”

Adler’s laugh held no warmth. “You sure got that wrong.”

Before the Pelican Bay Department had been disbanded and local policing had been assumed by the county sheriff’s office in February, Adler and I had solved four murders in as many months.

“Now I’m chasing dognappers,” I said. “Much less pressure.”

But I couldn’t help remembering the scared little girl with silvery blond hair and big blue eyes, who had shivered with shock and terror while I questioned her about the monster who’d abducted her. And now she was dead. “Tell me about Deirdre Fisk.”

“Not much to tell,” Adler said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Her family moved out of state after her ordeal. What was she doing back in the Bay area?”

Adler reached into his jacket pocket, extracted an evidence bag and slid it across the desk. “That’s the other item we found in her purse.”

I picked up the bag and read a recent newspaper clipping from the Tribune through the plastic. The article documented the presentation of a special scholarship to a Tampa teen by Florida’s governor. Accompanying the text was a photograph of the boy and his parents with the governor and, behind them, several other adults, whom the caption identified as members of the Florida legislature, including Juanita Menendez from Tampa, Ronald Warner from Bradenton, Carlton Branigan from Clearwater, and Edward Raleigh from Pelican Bay.

“Maybe Deirdre knew the teen or his family,” I suggested.

“It’s possible. But, according to the victim’s driver’s license, she lived in Pennsylvania.”

“That’s where the family moved after they left Tampa. Have you notified next-of-kin?”

Adler nodded. “Her parents are deceased. Her only living relative is an older sister Elaine, who moved back to Tampa a few years ago. I just came from her apartment, where Deirdre’s been visiting the past two weeks.”

“Did the sister say why Deirdre had my address and this news clipping?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out, but Elaine’s not cooperating.”

“You think the sister’s involved?”

Adler shrugged. “Hard to tell. She didn’t want to talk to me about Deirdre’s business.”