Secret Justice Read online

  I hurried away and tried to hide out in a corner of the dining room. My attention was focused on blotting the coffee off the front of my blouse, allowing Margaret Wheaton to approach me as she came out of the ladies’ room, a happy smile on her face.

  Giving up on the coffee stain, I studied her as she navigated the crowd. My concerns over Suzanne, my father and now, unbelievably, a new sibling on the way, were trivial by comparison to Margaret’s situation with Ron. I tried to focus on Margaret as a way to avoid my own impossible situation.

  Since Ron Wheaton had been diagnosed with ALS about a year ago, his illness had progressed too quickly. I’d watched Margaret become more and more exhausted, which I’d attributed to the stress of dealing with Ron.

  In the past few months, Ron had become weaker and less mobile. He was confined to his wheelchair much of the time and they rarely went out. Ron would soon require twenty-four hour care.

  Yet, on the few occasions when I spoke to him on the telephone, he sounded as strong as he had ever been. I could only imagine the horror of knowing you would one day be unable to breathe and would actually suffocate. The thought brought instant tears to my eyes again. Ron and Margaret Wheaton deserved better treatment from life. It seemed at the moment that the Sandra Kelleys of the world succeeded despite their meanness while Ron Wheaton suffered so unfairly.

  When Margaret eventually reached me, I gave her a hug, partly to hide my glassy eyes. She felt small and frail to me and I marveled at how heavy a burden those small shoulders could carry.

  “Can you believe this madness?” I asked her.

  She smiled and her face lit up a little more than usual lately as she nodded. “I love it, though. I’ve lived in Tampa my whole life and I never get tired of Gasparilla. When I was a little girl, the Gasparilla parade used to be held downtown and it was the same time as the State Fair. The parade was actually my very first date with Ron.” She sighed here, giving my hands a quick squeeze “Gasparilla holds many good memories for us.”

  Before I could reply, we heard several screams, as if a thousand marauding pirates had landed at Minaret. Alarmed, I moved as quickly as possible through the crowds toward the noise, with Margaret close at my side. Several other guests joined us enroute.

  When we got to the veranda, I could see Ron Wheaton slumped over in his wheelchair, not moving, while Suzanne Harper, my stepmother, stood near him. Suzanne’s mouth was wide open, head thrown back, resembling the heroine of a horror movie as she screamed repeatedly at full volume.

  But not loud enough to wake the dead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 8:00 p.m.

  January 27, 2001

  IGNORING THE NOISE OF Suzanne’s screaming, Margaret turned her face into my shoulder as someone rushed to Ron Wheaton and began to administer CPR, shouting, “Call nine one one! Call nine one one!” I held her close to me and tried to shelter her from the elbows and stares of the gawkers.

  Above the heads of the small crowd of people pushing too close to Ron’s wheelchair, I saw George working his way through, trying to calm everyone down. The paramedics George had hired to be on the scene today could not get through the throng.

  Tampa’s Police Chief Ben Hathaway, dressed in full pirate regalia as a member of the Minaret Krewe, came forward. “Step back, people. Please step back,” he said, pushing gently to move the spectators aside.

  Too quickly, it seemed, I heard sirens coming up the driveway. Soon, more paramedics, these in official uniforms, went out to the veranda, asked questions and tried to revive Ron, but even the uninitiated among us could see that their efforts would be fruitless.

  “Is he dead?” Margaret asked me.

  “I can’t really see much,” I lied, unsuccessfully trying to shelter her from the truth. Having failed, I looked into her wide eyes and said, “I’m so sorry.”

  Margaret blinked a couple of times, then “Don’t be. It’s a blessing,” she told me, as she turned her head away, continued crying softly and moaning against my shoulder. The morbid thoughts I’d had earlier about Ron’s suffocating to death could be abandoned. But as I’d feared, he was not able to say a final good-bye to his beloved wife.

  I motioned to Chief Hathaway that Margaret and I were moving into the smaller dining room where we could sit down. I realized that Margaret’s happy memories of Gasparilla would be forever changed, now, and felt even sorrier for her than I had just a short while ago.

  She said nothing more about her husband’s death as we sat together, waiting. Margaret didn’t deserve unhappiness in her life, yet sorrow seemed to follow her like a black cloud these past few months. We sat in silence, for I could think of nothing comforting to say and Margaret seemed to be lost in her own reverie.

  Ron Wheaton was eventually taken away by an ambulance crew in no hurry to reach Tampa General Hospital, and Chief Hathaway took charge of the scene. He asked everyone not to leave because the police would soon arrive to take witness statements.

  “Why do you need to take statements now?” George asked him. “Hasn’t everyone been through enough already?” His glance took in Margaret’s small form and her tear streaked face. As well as he knew me, George could see my fatigue. I was sick at heart, too.

  “Death in a public place? During an event filled with unknown spectators?” Chief Hathaway said, as if George’s question was two strokes short of imbecilic.

  I saw George clinch his fists at his side. The last thing we needed was George to assault the police chief. I jumped in quickly, as if I was explaining to Margaret, “The police needed to record witness statements now, just in case.”

  She blinked a couple of times and then said, “Of course.”

  Chief Hathaway approached the spectators and began to collect their contact information.

  Turning to my husband, who was still breathing a little too hard, I asked, “How does it look out there, George?” I tried to get Margaret to drink a little water.

  “In the front of the restaurant, people haven’t even noticed that anything’s happened,” he told me. “It’s just nine-thirty. There’s still a pretty big crowd out there and we’ve had sirens all day. I think there will be people who leave here tonight not even knowing that Ron died,” he looked at Margaret as he said, “if that’s how you want it.”

  Margaret nodded in response. She wanted to protect her privacy, which was so like her. Margaret had led a closed life. There was no reason to believe she’d want to change that now, even though her husband had just died a very public death.

  “I’m going to take Margaret upstairs and put her in a guest room. Ben Hathaway can talk to her in the morning,” I told George, as I got Margaret to her feet. We made our way deliberately up the stairs to our flat. She came along meekly, allowing me to take her hand and lead her without complaint.

  I don’t know if she was in shock or just exhausted and emotionally drained, but when Margaret entered our guest room, she lay down on the extra bed and fell into rhythmic breathing almost immediately. In sleep, her small face relaxed and she seemed years younger.

  Would her life be better now? I wondered. Without a terminally ill husband to care for, I hoped so. At the moment, she needed rest. I closed the door softly as I left her in deep slumber. When she awakened, Margaret’s world would be completely changed. How would she deal with that?

  When I returned to our living room, Dad and Suzanne were seated together on the couch and Chief Hathaway sat across from them. “Just tell me what happened, in your own words,” Hathaway said to her, in a tone of voice that he probably used to talk suicidal teens down from the highest peak of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.

  For her part, Suzanne seemed more upset than Margaret had been. I poured yet another cup of coffee and stood in the doorway to listen. Between bouts of tears, Suzanne described finding Ron Wheaton on the veranda, while Dad held her and patted her shoulder, looking concerned. He obviously cared for her and showed as much. It was the most care-taking I’
d ever seen him do and I was more than a little astonished that he knew how to comfort someone in distress. He’d certainly never demonstrated that skill with me. I tamped down the green-eyed monster inside my heart and paid attention.

  “I wanted to go out for some air,” Suzanne told the chief. “I’m pregnant, you see, and I had gotten a little light-headed in there with all those people. I didn’t know where Jimmy was . . .” She looked at Dad, the grown man everyone calls “Jim.”

  “I’m so sorry, honey,” Dad consoled her, as if not being by her side every minute was a capital crime. My heart pounded a little harder in my chest as I watched him through the eyes of the neglected child I still felt myself to be at the moment.

  “That’s okay. You couldn’t have known,” she smiled, a little shaky. The purple lipstick long since chewed from her mouth and black mascara streaked from her raccoon eyes. She looked far less beautiful and much more vulnerable than she had at six o’clock this morning. Which made it that much more difficult to hate her.

  Hathaway got them back on track. “About what time was that?” he asked, as he wrote in the notebook balanced on his beefy thigh. We only had one chair big enough to accommodate Ben Hathaway. Whenever he comes to our flat, he always sits there.

  “I don’t know. About nine o’clock, I guess. I’m not wearing a watch,” Suzanne sniffled into one of George’s linen handkerchiefs.

  Traitor, I thought silently when I saw his monogram. Of course, he’d given it to her. Chivalry personified, that was my husband.

  “And then what happened?” Hathaway asked her. Clearly, she needed prodding.

  “I had trouble getting through the crowd, but I did make it to the veranda.” A few more dainty sniffles followed.

  Hathaway’s patience seemed to be wearing a little thin. “Were the doors closed or open?”

  “Closed. It was pretty cold outside,” she said, shivering as her body remembered that thirty-degree night out there. Dad pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders, over her wench’s blouse. She offered him a wobbly smile.

  The whole tableau could have been an amateur theater production, I thought uncharitably. The contrast between Suzanne’s hysterical reaction and Margaret’s stoic one—when it was Margaret whose husband had died, after all—would have been comical in other circumstances.

  “Then what did you do?” Hathaway prodded again.

  Suzanne gulped and wiped fresh tears. “There wasn’t anyone outside, because of the cold, I guess.” She hiccupped and her breath caught a little. A wobbly smile followed. “Anyway, I went out and it was sort of quiet, which I thought was great. It was so noisy inside the restaurant and I had started to get a headache,” she almost whined, and Dad patted her again while she laid her head on his shoulder and calmed her.

  “What happened next?” Hathaway displayed a little of the impatience I felt now, himself. He didn’t normally question witnesses. He did so now as a personal favor to me and George. If Hathaway hadn’t been here for the party, this job would have fallen to a detective or patrolman, most likely.

  Hathaway’s discretion was touching, and I appreciated it, even if I thought he was a little overzealous. He had no way of knowing how long he could find Suzanne Harper here in Tampa. But I felt this could have been done another time. Ron Wheaton died tonight of natural causes, after all. And Suzanne was planning to continue her visit for several weeks, unfortunately.

  “I turned toward my right and I saw a man in a wheelchair,” Suzanne continued. “It startled me at first because I hadn’t noticed him when I went out.” She hiccupped again and took another deep breath. In a rush of words, she said, “So, I talked to him.”

  I stifled a guffaw. Not because what she said was particularly funny, but because Suzanne hadn’t stopped talking since I met her. She would have talked to Ron Wheaton—responsive or not, dead or alive.

  Suzanne started to tear up again. Dad took the thoroughly soaked handkerchief from her gently and replaced it with a fresh tissue. “And he didn’t say anything.” She began crying hard now, but continued her story. “So I walked closer and spoke louder. I thought he just didn’t hear me.” She gave me a look that I took to be a reproach. As if to say that she’d noticed I had been ignoring her this morning in just the same way a dead man had tonight.

  “But he still didn’t say anything. I thought he might be sick or something, so I went around in front of him and I saw . . . ” At this point, she broke down completely and we all had to wait a few minutes for her sobs to pass.

  When she’d returned to silent sniveling, “What did you see, Mrs. Harper?” Hathaway asked.

  The question jolted me again. Sweat popped out on my forehead and my stomach began to churn. I leaned more solidly into the doorway to keep from falling down on suddenly wobbly legs.

  That was the first time I’d heard Suzanne referred to by my beloved mother’s name. “Mrs. Harper.” How could Grace Harper’s name be owned by this young woman? Would the vicious surprises never stop?

  My attention was drawn back to Suzanne when she answered. “I saw he was blue. I just knew he was dead. And—I don’t know what came over me,” she took a deep breath and finished her sentence, “but I just started to scream and scream and scream . . . .” Her voice trailed away as Suzanne looked at Dad with her sorrowful expression. Finally, she whispered, “I couldn’t stop.”

  After a few quiet beats, Hathaway asked her, “Did you see anyone else outside, near Mr. Wheaton’s wheelchair?”

  She shook her head and the tears rolled down her cheeks again. She made no move to wipe them away, but the tears continued. Hathaway let her go then, saying he’d talk to her more later if he needed to do so.

  Suzanne and Dad stood. They walked down the hallway toward their room, Suzanne still crying while Dad held her and crooned, “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay,” over and over.

  I watched them go as tears sprang to my own eyes, out of the watchful gaze of Ben Hathaway or anyone else. For I realized that Dad loved Suzanne, in a way that defied logic. He loved her.

  The knowledge was like a steel dagger, piercing my heart.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tampa, Florida

  Saturday 11:00 p.m.

  January 27, 2001

  I’VE NEVER DISCOVERED A dead person, myself, and Suzanne was probably more upset than I would have been due to the raging hormones of pregnancy. Yet, when I saw Ron Wheaton out on the veranda, he had looked peaceful. Not frightening in the least.

  But then, I had known he was going to die soon and Suzanne probably had not. Although her distress was real enough, Suzanne was more emotional than the situation called for, if indeed anyone had told her about Ron’s condition and his prognosis. Like Margaret, I felt it was a blessing that he’d gone now, and gone quickly.

  “I’m glad Margaret wasn’t alone at home with her husband when he died,” I told Ben Hathaway when we sat in the more sturdy chairs around our kitchen table and discussed his interview notes a while later. “What a horrible experience that would have been.”

  He looked at me quizzically until I told him about Ron’s ALS.

  Hathaway had been treating Ron’s death like a crime scene, in part because he hadn’t known about Ron’s medical condition and in part because he knew the urgency of getting the names of witnesses who were probably tourists and would soon be on their way back to wherever they had come from.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say Ron Wheaton died of a heart attack. He had all the signs,” Hathaway told us now. “But we won’t know for sure until the autopsy comes back.”

  “Why do an autopsy at all?” George asked

  “We’re required to perform an autopsy when someone dies away from a hospital or under suspicious circumstances,” Hathaway explained. “It’s just routine.” Then, he added with a little too much enthusiasm for my taste, “And, it’s always possible that the man was murdered.”

  My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t have been more astounded. Maybe Hathaway really did
need more work to do since Tampa’s crime rate was down.

  George said what I’d been thinking. “You’re making a mountain out of less than a molehill, don’t you think, Ben?”

  Before Ben could deny it, I asked him, “Who would murder Ron Wheaton? He was going to die soon anyway. What would be the point?”

  Hathaway stirred more sugar into his already sweetened coffee while he considered his answer. “We don’t have a lot of information right now, so I can’t tell you whether or not Ron Wheaton was killed, let alone what the killer’s motive might have been.” His face assumed a contemplative pose and his tone became thoughtful. “I’d say there’s the usual possibilities: profit, revenge, jealousy, to conceal a crime, to avoid humiliation or disgrace.” Then, he looked at me and actually smiled. “Or my personal favorite, homicidal mania. That’s usually an easier one to solve.”

  The question, and the tone, got my back up. “Is this cop humor or something?” I snapped, more than a little angry and ill-tempered with him, I admit. “Murder a man who soon wouldn’t even be able to feed himself?” The very idea was insulting to our guests, people we’d invited into our home. Why, the thought was outrageous. “What kind of a monster would do that?”

  Hathaway gazed at me as sympathetically as he could arrange the features of his pugnacious face. “Maybe someone who loved him very much and didn’t want to see him suffer anymore. Did you ever think of that?”

  He stopped a minute to let his words sink in. I felt my eyes widen as the implications of his suggestion traveled to my tired brain and registered somewhere around my gut.

  Then he said, “Maybe you’re not aware of it, but we have way too many mercy killings here in Tampa, Willa.”

  “Come on, Ben,” George said, having reached the same conclusions I had about what Hathaway was about to say.

  Hathaway was not deterred. Once he got rolling, there was no stopping him. “Too often, it seems like the only way out of a terrible terminal illness is to end the elderly patient’s life.”