Charlotte Douglas - Holidays Are Murder

Mother’s sigh of exasperation vibrated loudly through the handset. “You know what I mean, Margaret. At least, I hope you haven’t forgotten all the social niceties.”

Not as long as I had Mother as a constant reminder. “Thanks, Mother. I’ll see you Thursday.”

I climbed out of bed and gazed through the sliding-glass doors of my second-floor bedroom at St. Joseph Sound and the Intracoastal Waterway that separated the city from Pelican Beach. The waters, smooth as glass, reflected a towering bank of cumulus clouds, rose-tipped by the sunrise, and mirrored the shimmering lavender-and-pink striations cast by the early-morning sky.

For a moment I considered what life might be like without my job. With the tidy sum vested in my pension and a small income from the trust Daddy had left me, I wouldn’t have to work. If I retired, I could enjoy a cup of coffee and the morning paper on my balcony while I watched the charter boats heading into the Gulf with their boatloads of tourists.

And then what would I do the rest of the day?

With a month’s worth of Bloomberg’s surveillance video waiting at the station, I headed for the shower.

Adler was already at the station when I arrived.

“Did you go home last night?” I asked.

Adler had a pretty young wife, Sharon, and an adorable year-old daughter, Jessica, and I worried that the extra hours he logged were negatively affecting his family. I didn’t want him to end up as Bill had, divorced and unable to watch his daughter growing up.

“Yeah, I left right after you.” Adler flushed to the tips of his ears. “I’m logging some personal time today. Came in early to let you know before I take off.”

He was having trouble looking me in the eye. I shut the door to the CID cubicle that some called an office and faced him. “What’s up?”

He lowered his voice. “An interview with the Clearwater P.D. I can’t wait for the council to make up its mind about whether to keep our department. For my family’s sake, I have to make sure I have a job.”

Although he was still green, I respected Adler more than any of my partners since Bill Malcolm. With his sharp mind and humble demeanor, he had the makings of a great detective. He also had the rare gift of bringing out my maternal instincts, and I would sorely miss him if he left.

I spent the rest of the day watching surveillance tapes until my eyes crossed. During the past few weeks, several people had done some serious browsing in Bloomberg’s without making any purchases, but no one fit the description of either of the perps. In desperation, I punched the number of Mick Rafferty, head of the sheriff’s crime lab, into my phone.

“Mick,” I said when he answered. “Do you have the latest face recognition software?”

“You know I do, Maggie, me darlin’.” Mick was quintessential Boston Irish, young and cocky with devilish blue eyes, wall-to-wall freckles and an encyclopedic mind like a steel trap. “Haven’t you seen the ACLU goon squad screaming invasion of privacy for the past few months on the evening news?”

I wasn’t about to admit how long it had been since I’d watched a newscast, evening or otherwise. “Does the software work?”

“What have you got?”

I explained about the surveillance tapes and my hope that Mick could run a few of the faces through the system in hopes of coming up with a match.

“Make notes of the footage you want me to check and send me the videos,” he said. “But I have to warn you, I have three major homicide cases that have priority. It could be a while before I can get to your tapes.”

“I understand, Mick,” I said. “But I’m flying blind here, and I’m afraid this pair will hit again. Next time somebody might get hurt.”

“You’ll get the bastards, Maggie. You always do.”

I marked the tapes that showed suspicious customers, bundled the videos in a bag and carried them to my car to transport to the sheriff’s crime lab in midcounty.

Thanksgiving morning dawned warm, clear and bright, the kind of November day that had the folks down at the chamber of commerce—and tourists who’d shelled out big bucks for their holiday vacations—exchanging high fives. As I drove north along Edgewater Drive into town, joggers in colorful spandex were spaced along the bayside path like beads on a string, the brown pelicans that gave the town its name dived for fish in the emerald-green waters, and the cloudless sky promised a balmy, sunny day.

After I passed the marina, I turned into the parking lot of Sophia’s, a four-star restaurant and hotel, built like a Venetian palazzo and nestled on the edge of the bay. Antonio Stavropoulos, the maître d’, had called the station earlier and requested that I stop by, and the dispatcher had relayed his message.

I had to circle the lot twice before I found a place to park. Thanksgiving breakfast at Sophia’s was a local holiday tradition, and the recent murder of the restaurant’s owner by her greedy husband had apparently not diminished the eatery’s appeal. If anything, the publicity appeared to have increased business.

Antonio met me in the lobby. The tall, elegant man, gray-haired and rake slim in his continental-cut suit, took a large cardboard box from behind the hostess desk and handed it to me.

“A gift,” he said, “for the members of your department from the staff at Sophia’s.”

Departmental regs and Shelton with apoplexy danced through my head. “I’m sorry, but we can’t accept gifts.”

“But today is Thanksgiving, and here we are grateful for the hard work the police have done to catch our Sophia’s killer and put Lester Morelli behind bars where he belongs.”

“You’re very kind,” I said, “but rules are rules.”

And Chief Shelton was poised like a stalking panther, waiting for one wrong slip so he could fire me and justify his fierce opposition to my joining the force fifteen years ago, when I’d taken him to court in a discrimination suit to win my job.

“I understand,” Antonio said with a twinkle in his eye. “Then you must purchase these pastries for your department, no?”

I stifled a groan. Pastries at Sophia’s ran about a dollar a bite, and that huge box held at least four dozen of the luscious goodies. “Sure. How much?”

“One dollar,” Antonio said with a deadpan expression. “Tax included.”

Ten minutes later, with the box of baklava and other Greek delicacies stashed in the station’s break room, I entered my office to contemplate the rooftop burglars who’d so far eluded me.

The fact that they hadn’t struck again the past two nights was no consolation. I’d asked the chief to have the media alert business owners to secure their rooftop duct systems, but Shelton was too paranoid about the political fallout to comply. The most I’d been able to accomplish was the distribution of lists of the stolen jewelry along with our incomplete description of the thieves to Bay area pawnshops. My only hope was that the perps would be dumb enough to try to move the items in the area.

Later in the morning, Adler was plowing his way through a third piece of baklava and revisiting mug shots in case we’d missed someone the first time around. He’d offered no details on his earlier job interview, and I hadn’t asked. I figured he’d talk about it when he was ready.

“How come there are so few skinny criminals?” he asked as he flipped through the pages of photographs. “All these guys are big and muscle-bound.”

I shrugged. “They’ve all been through the system. Guess they bulked up by working out in prison. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

My mind didn’t want to grasp the possibility that had been flitting around the edges of my consciousness since Maria Ridoletti’s description of the first perp.

“Unless our thieves are children.”

I dressed for the holiday dinner at Mother’s with my usual fatalism. No matter how well-made or perfectly fitted my gray slacks, burgundy silk blouse and ubiquitous black blazer, Mother and Caroline, who were on a first-name basis with every salesclerk in Neiman Marcus at Tampa’s International Plaza, would consider me a frump.

But focusing on couture was merely a diversion from the anger over the break-ins that simmered deep inside, a fire I had to douse or I’d end up being the turkey at our Thanksgiving meal. Interacting with my family without creating a domestic crisis took the combined skills of a global diplomat and a SWAT hostage negotiator. In my present state of mind, I’d send my mother into cardiac arrest and my sister into a swoon before the night ended.

Bill Malcolm, who, like Sean Connery, grew more handsome with age, arrived at four-thirty, looking like a cover model for Yachting World in gray slacks, navy blazer and a white turtleneck that showcased his George Hamilton tan. Homing in on my disposition like a heat-seeking missile, he saw immediately beneath my calm facade.

“If this dinner has you so worked up, don’t go,” he stated with his usual and often irritating logic.

“It’s not that.”

“The job?”

I nodded. “You’d think after two decades I’d grow a thicker skin.”

“Uh-uh.” He took my hand, led me to the sofa and pulled me down beside him. “If these crimes stop affecting you, then you’ve lost your humanity. I never want to see that happen.”

“I can deal with most of it, but when kids are involved…”

Images that had dogged my days and haunted my dreams for over sixteen years made me shudder. Small, white, bloated bodies on the medical examiner’s table, young girls, children really, pulled from Tampa Bay, where they’d been dumped like garbage by their assailants. Try as we might, Bill and I had been unable to track down the monster who had killed them. The murders had stopped, but whether because we’d turned up the heat or the killer had simply moved on, I’d probably never know.

“New case?” Bill asked.

“Not exactly. It just struck me today that our rooftop burglars might be kids.”

Bill nodded. “And a kid didn’t have the knowledge to pull off that jewelry store heist, not unless someone coached him.”

“What kind of person uses kids to do his dirty work?” Dickens’ Oliver Twist and Fagin came instantly to mind. I knew that degree in library science was good for something.

“You sure they’re kids?” Bill asked.

“I don’t have hard evidence, only what my gut’s telling me.”

He pulled me toward him and kissed my forehead. “Ah, Margaret, that’s only one of the things I love about you.”

“My gut?”

“That, too, but mainly because after over twenty years on the job, you’re still capable of outrage.”

I glanced at the clock. “Speaking of outrage, if we don’t get moving, that’s what Mother’s going to display if we’re late.”

The home of my youth was located in Pelican Bay’s most exclusive section, Belle Terre, a waterfront enclave of mansions built in the 1920s and 1930s on a bluff above the sound, most now on the National Register of Historic Buildings.

Growing up, I’d taken for granted the Mediterranean splendor of the house designed by Misner with its soaring beamed ceilings, mosaic tile floors, central courtyard and Spanish tile roof, set on two acres of prime waterfront real estate. In the lush St. Augustine lawn, brick pathways meandered through moss-draped live oaks, orange trees and jacarandas, and ended at the bayside tennis court, where I’d spent some of the happiest hours of my childhood playing tennis with my dad. Today I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held a racket.