CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Torpor. Malaise. Lethargy. These are descriptions that fit the year-rounders when the dog days of August approach and the heat and humidity hang so heavy over our island that their weight drives us to the ground, turning us into whining creatures who scurry like spider crabs from our air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned markets or restaurants or bars and back again. The key is sparsely populated, with even some of the full-time residents fleeing to cooler climes in northern states or the mountains of the Midsouth. It is a time when few tourists visit our island and those who do are other Floridians who trade the heat of the interior for the anemic breezes that blow from the Gulf of Mexico. It is a time when listlessness stalks the island, when we fall into a kind of stupor that is interrupted only by our need for cold beer and whiskey and boozy comradeship with our fellow sun dwellers, those souls who gladly trade the blissful Florida winters for the harsh summers that drive less hardy mortals into cooler venues to the north.
August had crept up on me with little fanfare. Another month gone, a little closer to mid-October when our weather usually turns gorgeous for its seven month run up to the heat of the summer that comes early in our latitudes.
So, on the first day of August, I drove the Explorer north across the Longboat Pass Bridge onto Anna Maria Island, through the towns of Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach and into the village of Anna Maria City that perches on the northern end of the seven-mile-long island. The bed and breakfast was a large and rambling Key West-style home that boasted five bedrooms, each with a private bath. It sat on the tip of the island with views over Passage Key Inlet to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and Egmont Key. A thin beach separated the water from the grass lawn behind the little inn.
A small brass sign on the front door invited me in. I walked into a large foyer with hardwood floors and a staircase ascending to the second floor. A desk sitting near the stairs held a computer and a small bell. A sign welcomed me to the Anna Maria Inn and suggested I ring the bell for service.
A woman came from the back in response to the bell. “Hello,” she said, “I’m Jeanette Deen. You must be Mr. Royal. Right on time. Detective Duncan said you’d be by this morning.”
I’d read the transcript of the statement a young police officer had taken from Jeanette Deen. I knew she was in her mid-sixties and had bought the Anna Maria Inn with her husband about ten years before when she had retired as principal of an elementary school over in the middle of the state.
The woman standing before me looked to be late forties, perhaps early fifties if you wanted to stretch it. She was trim and fit, her dark hair showing only a few strands of gray. She was smiling and I could see the reflection of the beauty she must have been in her youth. She was still beautiful, but in a more restrained and refined way. She had aged gracefully and because of good genes or good living or both had retained much of her youth far beyond the age when most of us begin to wrinkle and sag.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Deen,” I said. “I appreciate your taking the time to speak to me.”
“Please call me Jeanette, Mr. Royal. I hope I can be of some help. It was truly tragic what happened to that young woman. Come on back to the kitchen. I’ve got fresh coffee brewing.”
I followed her to the back of the house and sat at a table in a dining nook that was surrounded by glass, giving me the benefit of the view up Tampa Bay to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. She poured coffee for both of us and took a seat across from me. “How can I help you, Mr. Royal?”
“Please call me Matt, Jeanette. I’m a lawyer and I represent a man whose son was killed on the beach on Longboat Key back in June, the same day as the murders on the Dulcimer. We think there may be a connection between the two events.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“There hasn’t been any press on it. We’re not even sure there is a connection, but we’re trying to find out.”
“Who is ‘we’ if I might ask?”
“I’m working closely with Chief Bill Lester and Detective J. D. Duncan of the Longboat Key police. Our interests are the same. We’re trying to find out who committed the murders.”
“How can I help?”
“What can you tell me about Katherine Brewster?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. She’d only been here for a couple of days when she died. I suggested she take the Dulcimer cruise that evening. She had a gift certificate for dinner on the boat, but I don’t know if she intended to use it. Maybe if I hadn’t suggested she go, she’d still be alive.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Oh, I don’t. I understand that things happen. If I hadn’t suggested she go on the boat that evening, she might have been killed crossing Cortez Road or on the trip back to Charlotte. There’s no way of telling, so I know intellectually that I wasn’t the cause of her death. But one does wonder at the vagaries of life, doesn’t one?”
“One does. I’m convinced that life is a series of random events that somehow come together in some sequence that is beyond our understanding. That sequence, when it becomes a whole timeline, is what we call our lives. It may be fate or the result of a higher intelligence or God. I don’t know, but it’s there.”
“Oh, I think God has a hand in it. I’m not sure just how, but then that’s part of the eternal mystery, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “It is a mystery, and for some of us it works out very well and that’s what we call happiness.”
She smiled. “You’re a philosopher, Matt.”
“Right.” I laughed. “Do you know how she chose your place for her stay, or for that matter, how she chose Anna Maria?”
“That’s easy. She was given a gift certificate for a week’s stay here at my inn. She said she had been asked to bartend at a function in Charlotte, some charity event, and a few days later, she got the certificate in the mail along with a thank-you note signed by the chairman of the event.”
“Was the gift certificate one you issued?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“To a travel agency in Charlotte.”
“Was this unusual?”
“Not really. Sometimes an agency somewhere requests one. They pay me with a credit card less their commission and I send it to them. It’s blank, so they can put whatever name they want to on the certificate.”
“Would you have a record of the one used by Katherine Brewster?”
“I’m sure I do. It’ll be in my computer.”
I followed her back out to the foyer. She sat at the desk and clicked at the keyboard for a few seconds. “Here it is. Each certificate is numbered and the one that Katherine used was issued by me to the EZGo Travel Agency in Charlotte on May fifteenth of this year.”
“Have you sent them other certificates?”
“I don’t think so.” She went back to the keyboard. “No. That’s the only one.”
“Can you check to see how it was paid for?”
A few more clicks. “A credit card. Would you like the number?”
“I would.” I thanked her for the coffee and the information and left.