Charlotte Douglas - Storm Season

“Any other calls?” I asked.

“No. It’s been like the quiet before the storm.”

“Bite your tongue. That’s a word I don’t want to hear until December.” The first day of that month would mark the end of hurricane season.

I took a seat on the chair nearest Darcy’s desk, faced the television and waited for the weather forecast. Early September is the peak of hurricane season, and for residents of Florida, that meant all eyes were on the tropics, and chief meteorologists Paul Dellegatto of FOX 13 and Steve Jerve of Channel 8 had become our best friends and constant companions.

So far this season, South Florida and the panhandle had been hit hard. Tampa Bay residents were holding their collective breath, wondering if this would be the year of the Big One, when a storm the equivalent of Ivan or Katrina would wreak havoc on an area that had been spared destruction since 1921.

Bill and I always remained alert to the changing weather. Living aboard his cabin cruiser at the Pelican Bay Marina, Bill needed plenty of lead time to secure his boat before evacuating. And my waterfront condo was in a mandatory evacuation zone. Before the multiple hits Florida took in 2004, I’d been more casual about leaving when a storm was forecast. But after viewing pictures of houses near the water that Ivan and Katrina had obliterated, except for the concrete slab foundations, I’d developed a healthier respect for the storms’ potential for damage. Every June when hurricane season began, I packed a large plastic bin with important papers, canned goods, bottled water, battery-powered lanterns, a first aid kit and kibble for Roger and stored it in the hall closet, ready to set in the car and evacuate at a moment’s notice.

On the little TV, the commercial ended and the weather forecast began.

“Damn,” I said.

The icon for a tropical storm had popped up on the weather map south of Jamaica in the Caribbean. The cone of probability for Tropical Storm Harriet stretched five days out and indicated the storm would strengthen in intensity and, pushed by upper air currents, a shifting jet stream and meandering Bermuda High, curve back toward Florida. For now, the state’s west coast, from the Dry Tortugas all the way to Cedar Key, was on alert.

Darcy sighed. “Now we’ll be glued to the television for days.”

“Yeah, praying it misses us and feeling guilty for wishing it on some other part of the country.” I stood up and headed for my office. “Come on, Roger, we have work to do.”

By work, I meant reading the Times and the Tribune and finishing the crossword puzzles, because, except for eventually identifying the Lassiter sisters’ tenant, I had no active cases at the moment. The hiatus didn’t disturb me. I had my police pension and a small trust fund from my father. Bill also had his police pension and a small fortune in real estate in the orange groves his father had left him. Pelican Bay Investigations was more a venture to keep us both busy and sane rather than a needed source of income.

A LITTLE BEFORE THREE, I set aside the completed puzzles, put a leash on Roger, told Darcy I wouldn’t be in again until the next morning and drove a few blocks to the marina. Anvil-shaped clouds towered in the eastern sky and portended evening thunderstorms. In spite of the threatening weather, many of the slips at the marina were empty due to sailors enjoying pleasure cruises and charter boat captains fulfilling the fishing fantasies of tourists in the deep waters of the Gulf.

Bill’s thirty-eight-foot cabin cruiser, Ten-Ninety-Eight, police code for “mission accomplished,” was docked at the end of one of several piers. It appeared closed and deserted, but as Roger and I approached, I could hear the hum of air-conditioning. I’d already spotted Bill’s SUV in the parking lot, so I knew he was aboard. I stepped from the dock to the rear deck and tapped on the sliders that opened onto the lounge, Bill’s tiny but efficient living area.

When he opened the glass door, my heart did a little flip-flop at the sight of him, making me feel like a teenager again instead of a forty-nine-year-old. Even at sixty, Bill was a man who turned women’s heads. Tall, tan and in terrific shape, with thick white hair and blue eyes, he grew more handsome with age. But today those baby blues had no twinkle when they greeted me, and his usual grin had gone AWOL.

“You okay?” I asked.

He pulled me inside, closed the door behind Roger and grabbed me in a brief but fierce hug.

“We have to talk.” His tone was as serious as his expression.

Fear threatened to close my throat. For years, Bill had been pressuring me to marry him. Set in my single ways and commitment-shy, I’d dragged my feet until recently. Last Christmas, we’d set our wedding date for Valentine’s Day, still five months away, to give me time to get used to the idea of marriage, but after we’d solved our last case, I’d recognized my delaying tactics as senseless. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Bill, and we weren’t getting any younger, so what was I waiting for? We’d agreed then that we’d marry as soon as we finished furnishing the house we’d bought together a few months earlier.

Except for a few odds and ends, the house was now move-in ready. Judging by his expression, I worried now that Bill was the one getting cold feet.

I sank onto the love seat on one side of the lounge, and Bill took one of the folding director’s chairs across the room from me. Not a good sign.

“I’m listening,” I said.

Roger curled onto the sofa next to me and placed his head on my lap, as if sensing I needed comfort.

Bill’s face looked pained. “I don’t know how to say this.”

In spite of his tan, his skin had a strange pallor. I prayed he wasn’t ill. I snapped my mind shut against a dozen dire possibilities.

“Just tell me.”

He took a deep breath and exhaled, like a diver getting ready to take a header off the tower. “It’s Trish.”

The years fell away, and I was once again a rookie, fresh out of the academy, with Bill Malcolm as my first partner with the Tampa Police Department. He had a wife the other male officers envied, a gorgeous woman with magnificent red hair, exotic green eyes, a curvaceous figure and a sense of humor that kept everyone around her smiling. Bill and Trish also had a six-year-old daughter, Melanie. The perfect family.

Until the strain of having a husband who put his life on the line every day finally broke Trish’s nerves and their marriage. The end came right after I’d saved Bill from being hacked to death by a machete-wielding wife abuser. I’d had to put three rounds in the guy’s chest to stop him, the only time in my career I’d ever fired my weapon. Bill was safe, but the what-might-have-been had sent Trish over the edge. She filed for divorce, moved to Seattle and took their daughter Melanie with her.

And she’d broken Bill’s heart. He had still loved her and eventually had come to realize that she’d loved him, too, and the only way she could end the marriage that was destroying her emotionally had been to put a continent between them.

At first, Melanie had returned to Tampa for summer visits with her dad, but as she reached adolescence, she had wanted to remain in Seattle with her friends—and her stepfather. Trish’s new husband, an accountant, had a nice safe job where no one would try to kill him, unless he was caught cooking the books by a client with a temper and the means for murder—highly unlikely for the straight-arrow Harvey in his safe suburban practice.

So over the twenty-three years since the divorce, Bill had lost touch with both Trish and Melanie and, to my amazement and delight, had fallen in love with me. Even when Melanie had married and had had children, she hadn’t encouraged her father to participate in their lives, a crying shame since Bill would have been a first-class grandfather.