Due Justice

Chapter 16

Tampa, Florida

Saturday 7:00 a.m.

January 16, 1999

Since I was playing golf Sunday with Dr. Aymes, I had canceled my Saturday game with Mitchell. I got up and snuck out while George was sleeping to take the dogs for their run.

I tried to work through what I knew about Morgan and Carly. If it was Michael Morgan in the water, who killed him?  And why?  And why hadn’t the body been identified?  I was hoping, with my fingers crossed almost the entire time, that it wasn’t him. Maybe it really was the lost tourist they had first believed. And if it was Morgan, I knew that both my ethical obligations as a judge and lawyer, and my concern for Carly and her family would keep me involved in this until it was resolved.

I tried to think of all the angles, the reasons someone would want Morgan dead. Who had a motive?  Opportunity?  My legs started to tire because I was too focused. So I just let my mind soar free. Before I knew it, I had done the entire ten miles and was back at the house.

I went out to the water and jumped in. Harry and Bess were already there. This is the part of our run they like the best because they get to submerge me and each other in the water ten or twenty times before I’m completely exhausted and give up. Then we got out, rinsed off outdoors and I put them in their screened sun porch to dry off while I ran up the back stairs.

I was in the shower, letting the warm water cover my face, inhaling the soothing vanilla fragrance of the bath gel and trying again to think of a way to disclose Dr. Morgan’s identity that would actually make someone take notice, when George came into my bathroom.

“Willa,” he said as gently as he could and still be heard over the running water, “Carly’s here. My God, she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked both exhausted and, at the same time, in a high state of anxiety. I gave her some hot tea and showed her to the bathroom where she could take a comforting soak. By the time she finished, she was yawning and standing in the kitchen with her eyes closed. So I put her in the guest room for a nap. She hasn’t regained consciousness.”

  I turned off the shower with trepidation. I’d wanted her to surface and she had. Maybe I should have been more careful what I wished for. Now what?  “Let me get dressed, and we’ll see if we can wake her and find out what this is all about.”  When I came into our small galley kitchen, George was finishing two cups of breve, one of my many indulgences. He carried them out to the veranda along with the Saturday Times, talking over his shoulder.

“Come out and have a coffee before you wake her. I think we both need some fortification first.”

In the end, we decided not to wake her and Carly slept for hours. I worked for a while in my study and waited. When I walked into the kitchen just after four o’clock, she, too, was making coffee and Cuban toast, wearing an old Key West T-shirt and nothing else.

“Well you look a lot better. I hope you feel better,” I told her.

She smiled, albeit slightly, more like a slice of acknowledgment. She didn’t act like the weight of the world was off her shoulders. “Do you have any idea what it’s like not to be perfect?”

The way she said it, perfection was certainly not an admirable trait. She was snide, almost nasty about it, like being “perfect” was worse than being a child molester. Carly’s never been subtle. What you see is what you get.

“Oh, I know you have that little gap between your front teeth and those red highlights in your hair have to be touched up every few weeks. I’ll bet it was just really trying to be six feet tall in seventh grade. And George’s constant devotion is probably just smothering.” She carried her toast to the small table and added skim milk to her coffee making it that sickly shade of green I imagine all waifs must admire. Otherwise, how can they drink the stuff?