An old man, fuzz of white body hair against leathery skin, was lying out on a lounge chair catching the early rays. The scent of coconut sun screen mingled with the whiff of chlorine. The pool was still marked off by yellow police tape.
I noticed that the office door was ajar, and when I popped my head inside, I saw Mary sitting at her desk, staring into space. I like Mary. She’s about twenty-five, an athletic sort of girl with a swimmer’s upper body and a runner’s thighs. She has a shiny black pony tail and one of those open, friendly faces, the kind you trust on sight.
‘Oh, Mr Erwin. You startled me. You weren’t wanting to use the pool, were you?’
‘I was. But I see it’s still off-limits.’
A frown wrinkled Mary’s smooth, tanned brow. ‘Well, I mean, it’s not on account of the cops or anything,’ she said. ‘It’s just… well, I didn’t think the residents would like it, you know, swimming in a dead man’s water.’ She turned her nose up. ‘So I’ve called maintenance and they’re gonna clean it out and refill it all fresh. Should be ready by this afternoon. Sorry.’
‘No, you’re right. It’s a good idea,’ I said.
Most people probably would be put off by swimming in the same water where an electrocuted Santa Claus had floated around all night alone in the dark, but it didn’t bother me much. I had seen death close up more times than I cared to remember. Besides, people swam in the ocean all the time and thousands have died there over the centuries.
‘Mary,’ I asked, ‘do you happen to know who the last people to see Mr Schiller alive were?’
‘His friends. Mr Brennan, Miss Lee and Miss Fraser. They said he was fine when they left.’
Of course. The ubiquitous trio.
Mary shook her head. ‘Never could understand what Miss Lee saw in that group, pretty girl like her.’
So I was vindicated for thinking exactly the same thing yesterday. And if a young woman like Mary could think it too, it couldn’t be either ageist or sexist, could it?
‘Mind if I ask you something?’ Mary said with a frown.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Mr Schiller was a Canadian citizen, right?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Well, I was worried, you know, like his relatives might come down and make some sort of lawsuit. What do you think?’
Aha, the great American paranoia raises its ugly head: lawsuits. ‘I’m no legal expert,’ I said.
‘You hear about things like that all the time, don’t you? I mean, they could sue for millions. I could be liable. It would ruin me.’ She laughed. ‘Even if they sued for hundreds it would bankrupt me. I could lose my job. I need this job, Mr Erwin. I need the money to go back to school.’
I smiled as reassuringly as I could and told her I didn’t think that would happen. We didn’t even know if Schiller had any next of kin, for a start. And she couldn’t be responsible for his behaviour when he was drunk.
‘But the cops said he must have tripped over that crack in the tiles.’
‘What crack?’
‘Come on, I’ll show you.’
We went outside. The old guy in the lounge chair was still working on his skin cancer. Near the side of the pool, Mary pointed out the crack. It didn’t look like much to me. I put my foot in front of it and slid forward slowly. My big toe slipped right over the crack and the rest of my foot followed. I could hardly even feel the rough edge of the tile. ‘It’s hardly enough to trip over,’ I said to Mary.
‘He was wearing flip-flops.’
‘Santa Claus was wearing flip-flops?’
She nodded.
‘I suppose that might make a difference. Even so… It’s still a long way from the water. Maybe six feet. Schiller was a little guy, only around five-four, wasn’t he?’
‘Yeah. I thought about that, too. But he must have been walking fast, or running, then he tripped and skidded in. Those tiles can get pretty slippery, especially if they’re wet.’
‘But wouldn’t the piano just rip out of the socket?’
Mary shrugged. ‘It was one of those ultra-light things,’ she said. ‘And it had a long cord.’
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell Santa Claus should be running towards the swimming pool in the dark with a live electric piano in his arms, no matter how tight he was or how light the piano.
A heron landed by the side of the moat. Just for a moment, I felt a slight shiver run up my spine to the hairs at the back of my neck. It was a sign I recognized. I was being watched. And not by the heron or the sunbather.
Mary turned and walked back to the office, sandals clip-clopping against the tiles. I followed her, admiring the way her thigh muscles rippled with each step. I felt strangely detached, though; I could admire the sculpted, athletic beauty of her body, but I didn’t feel attracted to her sexually. But, then, it had been a long time since I had been attracted to anyone sexually, except maybe Karen Lee.
Mary sat down at her desk again.
‘Look,’ I said, leaning forward and resting my hands on the warm wood, ‘I know this might sound strange to you, but I’d like you to do me a favour without telling anyone or asking too many questions. Do you think you could do that?’
Mary nodded slowly, tentatively. ‘Depends,’ she said, ‘on what it is.’
When I got back to the condo, it was time for breakfast, but without the swim, my appetite wasn’t up to much. I put on a pot of coffee, drank a glass of orange juice and ate a bowl of high-fibre bran. The healthy life.
Usually I took my second cup out to the lanai and worked on one of the cryptics from the Sunday Times book of crosswords. That was one thing always annoyed me about American newspapers: you couldn’t find a cryptic in any of them I’d seen. This morning, though, I took the two sheets of paper that Mary had printed out for me.
OK, so Schiller was alone at the pool after the sing-along, or so Ed, Karen and Ginny said. Anyone could have gone there in the dark, killed him and tried to make it look like an accident. And at least three people knew he was there: Ed, Karen and Ginny. Were they telling the truth?
There was some risk – there always is with murder – but it was minimal. Most of the residents are elderly and they’re usually in bed by ten. This isn’t like some of the places where you get kids drinking all night and skinny-dipping; there are no kids at Whispering Palms.
First, I looked over the list of condo owners I had persuaded Mary to print for me.
Schiller’s unit was owned on paper by Gardiner Holdings, registered in Grand Cayman Island. If that didn’t set alarm bells ringing in an old gumshoe’s mind, what would? But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it meant.
Ginny Fraser’s unit was a timeshare, though Ginny herself wasn’t listed as owning any time.
Ed Brennan’s unit was registered to a Dr Joseph Brady in Waterloo, Canada, and Karen Lee’s to a travel agency called EscapeItAll, based in Sarasota.
One way or another, these four had all ended up at Whispering Palms, Fort Myers, Florida, and I was damned if I could see any reason other than pure chance.
So which one of them did it? And why? Or was it someone else?
I pushed my glasses back up the bridge of my nose and reached for the telephone. Being a private investigator from Toronto has some advantages in Florida.
When I’d finished on the phone I felt the need to go out for a drive. Not far. Maybe over the skyway to Sanibel and Captiva. Lunch at the Mucky Duck. Seafood and Harp lager. After all, I was on vacation, whatever Al said about gumshoes and the search for truth and justice.