Authors: Hilary Norman
She hesitated for about another half-second en route to her front door, but then after that she was too busy focusing on her young patient to think of anything else; and then later, after Hayman
phoned back to tell her that things were all set at the lodge, Grace was busy packing a bag and asking Teddy if he could come by and get Harry and leaving the number of the hotel on her machine for
anyone who might need her urgently.
Sometimes, she remembered herself telling Claudia more than once or twice, one just had to go with the flow, to do something when the urge struck, to just
do
it, grab the moment.
So she grabbed it.
At three-ten, Sam was just leaving Metro-Dade headquarters where he’d been checking criminal records on their number one suspect in the rape cases – for which
Sergeant Kovac had made Martinez lead investigator – when a thought unrelated to the current case slipped into his mind for the third time that day, making him reach for his personal cellular
phone (Miami Beach PD didn’t run to that kind of expense) as he climbed into his car.
Angie Carlino was an old pal, an outsize, sexy, kind-hearted Italian who’d worked in a series of clerical jobs down on Washington Street before falling in love with a Tampa-based cop and
moving to the west coast where she now worked for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office. Sam had gone to Angie’s wedding, sent her gifts when her babies were born, and she always sent
him a caring note around the time of the anniversary of Sampson’s death. From time to time, when one or the other needed a little coast-to-coast help, they used each other to shortcut the
system. Her home number was one of about twenty that Sam had logged on his cellular phone’s memory.
‘
Angela
,
bellissima, come sta
?’
‘Hey, handsome, what’s doing?’ Angie always recognized Sam’s voice, complained his Italian was lousy unless he was singing it.
‘Usual stuff, babe – how’s the family?’
‘Gorgeous and healthy, thank God.’ Angie paused. ‘So what’s up, Sam? What do you need?’
‘Anything you can find on a double shooting in St Pete a few years back.’
‘How many years is a few?’
‘Can’t tell you that exactly – any place between three and six.’
‘That’s a big help. Do we have a name?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Well, do we have
anything
to make this halfway possible?’
‘We have a mother and father in St Pete shot by their teenaged son. Both parents survived and sounds like Dad twisted some arms to get the case dropped – but there has to be
something on record.’
‘Depends how many arms he twisted,’ Angie said wryly. ‘When do you need this, Sam? I mean, this is Saturday afternoon and I’m about to go out and buy me a new
négligée.’
‘Special occasion?’
‘Do I need a special occasion to get my husband excited?’
‘I’ll bet Tony’s in a permanent state of excitement, Angie.’
‘Damn right, Sam. So can this wait till Monday, or is it urgent?’
Sam’s face twisted a little. ‘Tell the truth, Angie, I don’t know what to tell you. No, it’s not legitimately urgent – it’s not even official business –
but something’s bugging me, and I’m not sure what. I just have this feeling I should have checked it out a while back.’
‘Okay, kiddo, I’ll see what I can do –’ there was a smile in her voice – ‘soon as I’ve gotten over to
Victoria’s Secret
.’
‘I owe you one,’ Sam said.
She called him back on his cellular two hours later.
‘Nothing,’ she told him.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘
Niente. Nada.
Nothing that even vaguely approximated the scenario.’ Angie paused. ‘I can run it by some of the local guys on Monday, see if it rings any bells off the
record.’
‘That would be good,’ Sam said.
‘So do I get to go home now?’ Angie asked. ‘I waited here at the office in case you wanted me to check anything else.’
‘Did you get your négligée?’
‘You bet I did. My Tony’s going to be a happy guy tonight.’
‘Lucky Tony.’
‘So, nothing else?’ Angie nudged.
Sam took a moment, trying to understand why he felt so disturbed. ‘Yeah, maybe, one little thing.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Check out any references to a psychiatrist name of Hayman – Dr Peter Hayman – now resident down in Key Largo, used to work over your way, possibly in St Pete.’
‘How urgent is this one?’
Sam’s mind worked on. ‘Not urgent.’
‘I’ll take a quick run at him anyway,’ Angie said, ‘and if I don’t come up with anything fast, I’ll get back to it Monday. Okay?’
‘I double owe you,’ Sam said.
Grace arrived at Pelican Lodge a little after six to find there was no reservation in her name. The place was pretty as a picture – especially spectacular, in fact, after
the strip-mall-dullness of the Key Largo main drag – and the couple at the front desk were charmingly distraught about her predicament, but they were also insistent that no one had made a
booking for her.
‘Do you know who your friend spoke to, Dr Lucca?’ The woman, with short grey hair, efficient eyes and a name tag identifying her as Jane, looked to Grace like the kind of person not
only unlikely to make a major error, but equally likely to own up if she had.
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ Grace said. ‘All I know is that Dr Hayman must have called you between two-thirty and three-forty-five.’
‘If he did,’ Jane said, ‘he didn’t talk to me.’
‘Nor me,’ her dark-suited colleague named Carl added, dolefully.
Grace considered getting angry, and decided against. She thought about calling Hayman, and decided against that too, since he was bound to get mad at the hotel, and then presumably reiterate his
invitation for her to stay in his guest room, and she didn’t feel quite comfortable with that notion. So instead, she just stood at the reception desk and waited for Jane and Carl to sort
things out. It was, she figured, one of those situations where if she stood there long enough, a solution was bound to be found. After all, didn’t they always say that all hotels had spare
rooms for emergencies?
‘You must have a room somewhere,’ she said after another moment. ‘I’m really not very fussy. So long as it’s clean and—’
‘There’s nothing,’ Carl told her. ‘It’s just
awful
for you, Dr Lucca, and I wish we could just magic up a room, but there’s not so much as a broom
closet.’
‘I cannot begin to imagine,’ Jane said, ‘who Dr Hayman talked to—’
‘Or thought he was talking to,’ Carl suggested, darkly. ‘Maybe he got a wrong number and someone hoaxed him. Maybe some kid with a lousy sense of humour.’
‘That doesn’t seem terribly likely,’ Grace said dryly.
‘The problem is, Dr Lucca,’ Jane said, ‘this weekend’s been fully booked for a long while. There’s a fishing tournament on – people tend to book from year to
year.’
Grace began shifting impatiently. ‘Can you call another hotel for me?’
‘Well, of course we can,’ Carl answered, ‘and we’ll do our very best, but frankly, unless they’ve had a last-minute cancellation or no-show, I’m afraid
we’re going to find the same story all over.’
He was right. They sat Grace in a palm-shaded rattan chair on a beautiful porch and brought her complimentary iced tea while they pulled out all the stops – and failed; and then they
offered her a free weekend in their best suite for another time – if, Carl said, effusively, she could ever forgive them. But the bottom line was there were no rooms to be had on Key Largo,
Tavernier or Islamorada.
Grace had three choices. One, she could drive on down to Claudia’s and open up the house, but that meant playing games with the sophisticated alarm system which Daniel always switched on
when they were up in Fort Lauderdale. Two, she could go back home. Or three, she could simply accept Hayman’s offer – and since it was him she was supposed to be sailing with first
thing Sunday morning, nothing else made much sense. Yet still, even as she was digging her address book out of her canvas tote bag to find his number, Grace was less than perfectly happy about what
she was doing. She found herself remembering the last time she’d seen Hayman, a couple of weeks back, that moment when she’d thought he’d held on to her hand for that second or
two longer than necessary. Grace had wondered then if perhaps she’d misled him in some unintentional way, and she wondered now if choosing to stay with him might lead to awkwardness.
She found his number.
What if he hadn’t made the reservation at all?
Up until that very instant, Grace had been sure that some other hotel staff member – someone less irreproachable than either Jane or Carl – had created the error here. Could it have
been a deliberate – possibly predatory – male ploy?
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Lucca,’ she muttered, pulling her cellular phone out of her bag. Dr Peter Hayman was a respectable psychiatrist, researcher and writer – besides
which, Grace had already visited him at his place twice, and he’d been a perfect gentleman both times.
Leaping to absurd conclusions, Lucca.
She made the call.
It was only after they’d finished talking and she’d persuaded him there was no need for him to come and give the Pelican Lodge a piece of his mind, that it suddenly occurred to Grace
that what might really be troubling her was how Sam might read her staying with another man for the weekend, just because he was too overloaded to see her.
That, too, of course, was patently nonsense. Sam knew that her relationship with Hayman was a professional one, that it had been Cathy Robbins who had, inadvertently, brought them together.
Though if it hadn’t been for Cathy, Grace reminded herself, she and Sam might not have met either.
And, if she was entirely honest with herself, she wasn’t one hundred per cent sure if going sailing on a Sunday was exactly the standard mark of a professional relationship.
Sam came out of the interview room where he and Al Martinez had been questioning their number one suspect for over an hour. If they did have the right guy, it was only a matter
of waiting for blood and DNA tests to come through before they nailed him, since the rapist had done them the favour of leaving half a textbook of damning physical evidence – semen, saliva
and even blood – under one of the victim’s fingernails, more than probably corresponding to the rake marks they’d now found on their suspect’s buttocks. All of which meant
that with luck and a lighter-than-usual caseload at the ME’s office, Sam and Martinez might get their bad guy charged and locked up before the entire weekend was screwed.
‘Sam, you got a call from Angie Carlino in Tampa.’ Mary Cutter, another detective in Person Crimes, strode along the corridor towards them.
‘When?’ Sam glanced at his watch, saw it was after seven p.m., two hours since they’d spoken the last time.
‘Just a few minutes back – said can you call her at home?’
The door to the interview room opened and Martinez came out just as Cutter was swinging around and heading back where she’d come from. Sam noted Martinez’s eyes following her,
watched as the colour in his cheeks rose a notch. Al Martinez had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor who seldom dated or partied, but there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that since the
dark-haired, petite but curvaceous detective’s arrival on the Beach, a big hole had been blown in the bachelor’s composure.
‘Our guy’s about to cave in, Sam,’ Martinez said as Cutter vanished.
Sam thought about taking time out to call Angie Carlino back.
‘Hey, Becket,’ Martinez urged, and opened the door again.
They went back in.
The guy spilled his guts, but it was after eight-thirty before Sam had a chance to return the call to Tampa. Tony, Angie’s husband, didn’t sound disgruntled when he
heard Sam ask for Angie, so Sam figured they probably hadn’t gotten to the new négligée part of the evening yet.
‘Whatcha got for me, babe?’
‘More of the same, mostly,’ Angie told him.
‘You didn’t need to waste your Saturday night on this, Angie. I told you it wasn’t urgent.’
‘You know me, Sam. I’m like you – something bugs me, I’m like a dog with a bone. I ran the usual checks on this Hayman guy – nothing jumped out at me, which was
fine – no felonies or misdemeanours. But then I thought I’d just look him up, get his credentials, you know.’ Angie paused. ‘I found his listings for Key Largo, like you
said, going back to’92, but nothing in St Petersburg – nothing before’92 any place I looked.’
Sam frowned. ‘Nothing at all?’
‘Not so far. Being the weekend, I couldn’t call any of the shrink-type associations, but we got listings going back ten years for St Pete and Clearwater, and there’s no Dr
Peter Hayman, psychiatrist, in any of them.’
Sam thought back to what little Grace had told him about the guy she’d met at a seminar down in the Keys. ‘I only said it might have been St Pete – I guess I could be
wrong.’
‘So do I get to go back to Tony now?’ Angie asked, amiably.
Sam grinned. ‘He seen your purchase yet?’
‘Not yet. I got two steaks ready to go first.’
‘Have a good night, Angie – and thanks.’
‘You going home now, kiddo?’ she asked.
‘Not yet. Al and I got a case to finish up on, and then I’ve got a stack of paperwork to take care of.’ Sam made a mental note to ask Grace for more details on Hayman next time
they spoke.
‘Talk to you next week, Sam.’
‘Go strut your stuff for Tony, Angie babe.’
Grace had to admit the guest suite at Peter Hayman’s house made her glad that Pelican Lodge had been full. She’d liked the look and feel of the house the first time
she’d been there, but if he’d taken a hand with the decor of this room, then Hayman really had excelled himself. It was homey and laidback, with its very own piece of porch, railed off
from the rest for privacy; yet the things that needed to feel crisp and clean looked and felt and smelt as if some old-fashioned personal maid had just been through the place with fresh flowers and
an iron.