Chasing Shadows

5

A light rain glazed the pavement as Darcy’s car pulled away. Claire waved goodbye to Lexi until it disappeared. She’d filled Darcy in on Jace’s abracadabra appearance, but Darcy was used to that, too. Feeling suddenly unsure and alone, Claire was still standing outside under the overhang when Nick pulled into the driveway and another car came right up behind—a black SUV—evidently driven by South Shores’ tech expert, Hector Munez, alias Heck.

The two of them stepped inside where Claire had her luggage ready. Nick made the introductions. Heck was young—maybe midtwenties, but then, weren’t all cyber gurus young? He was short and wiry with slicked, coal-black hair, trimmed beard and dark eyes under thick brows. He spoke with a slight Latino accent. He seemed a little jumpy, probably nervous like her to be heading out on an important assignment.

“I hear I might be a chauffeur, too,” Heck told her with a broad smile.

“And, perhaps a second pair of ears and recorder in interview sessions,” she told him. “It’s important I watch as well as listen. Besides, I can’t type with one hand, and there are lots of legal drawbacks if I record every word, chain of custody and all that. I have to admit you’d be a lot less threatening than Attorney Markwood sitting there, glaring.”

“But I can glare with the best of them!” Heck said and elbowed Nick. Claire saw under the TECH-TOCK T-shirt he wore a thick gold chain to match his earring, which made her remember she hadn’t worn hers.

Nick shook his head and told Heck, “Your suddenly sitting in on interviews, my man, is probably just the first of many surprises from our new partner. But she’s the one calling the shots—on that, at least.”

“You will get used to my name,” Heck told her, while tossing his car keys from one hand to the other. “It always sounds like mild cursing, yes? But where you been, boss?” he said and hit Nick’s shoulder lightly with his fist. “Ladies—they all like that, full of surprise—surprise!”

Heck asked for her cell phone and punched his and Nick’s regular and his emergency numbers and email address into her phone logs in case she needed them, then hefted her single big suitcase and put it in the trunk of Nick’s car. With a wave, he got in his own vehicle and backed out, windshield wipers spitting rain.

Claire got it: they were in a hurry. Nick carried her laptop bag and she grabbed her purse and slung it over her good shoulder. While Nick waited in the covered entryway, she locked up, relieved that Jace hadn’t shown up at the last minute. She’d half expected him to. The first assignment she took after their split, he’d actually followed her to be sure she was safe when she drove into an area he didn’t like.

“I told Heck he doesn’t have to follow us, since he’s a fast driver,” Nick said with a nod at the departing SUV. She saw the back was covered with bumper stickers but they were too far off to read. “Too fast, so if he runs you around, keep an eye on him,” he added. “South Shores doesn’t need his speeding fines rolling in.”

“And where does South Shores billing roll in to?” she asked as he held the car door for her and she ducked in out of the rain.

He closed her door, hurried around and got in. “I’ll explain all that. We’ve got a long drive, and I brought a lot of background information for you to look over so we can hit the ground running. By the way, Heck is staying in a B and B in St. A, because he hates big hotels. I think it’s the fact his grandfather used to own a small hotel in Havana which Castro took over in la revolution, and he really loved the old man. He died just recently in Miami.”

As they left Naples and headed north on I-75, Nick kept his word, not about explaining South Shores, but about briefing her on everything else. “Not a good way to start a long drive,” he admitted as they headed into more rain, and he raised his voice over the thwack-thwack of the windshield wipers. “So, anyway, I think you should look at the Putnam County ME’s autopsy report on Francine first. You have everything you need to read by?”

“I’m fine. Don’t need magnifying glasses quite yet in my dotage.”

He smiled at her, and his gaze seemed to take her all in for a split second before he looked back at the road. “Nope,” he said. “I think you’ve got a few good years left in you. Look in the top folder in the accordion file by your feet.”

Annoyed that that split-second look from him scrambled her brain, she pulled the thick report out one-handed. She’d seen such before and was familiar with the layout. Francine Anne Montgomery, age 61, female, Caucasian... Claire skimmed to the estimated time of death. Her daughter Jasmine Stanton (nee Montgomery), age 41, had discovered her unresponsive at 8:04 p.m. exactly one month ago today, sprawled on her bedroom floor near the French doors to the balcony on the second floor of Shadowlawn Hall overlooking the St. Johns River near Palatka, Florida. Daughter called 911, and the squad pronounced Francine Montgomery deceased at 8:45 p.m. Date and time of the autopsy were listed with the attached, handwritten note that “The deceased’s daughter Jasmine Stanton insisted her mother must have died of a drug overdose and did not want Francine ‘to be dissected like a frog.’ Daughter was distraught and belligerent.”

“Not only poor Francine, but poor Jasmine,” Claire said.

“Yeah. Losing her mother, finding her mother...” His voice trailed off. For one second his deep voice snagged before he went on, “Then being investigated for her possible murder. If we can turn something up fast, it may keep her from being indicted. Did you get to the forensic findings yet?”

“I am now. External Examination. No needle marks, no unexplained scars or bruising.”

Claire flipped pages one-handed, balancing the papers on her knees. Internal Examination. “Stomach contents, food and beta-blocker drug, all listed. Death from cardiac arrhythmia,” she read aloud. “But it says here that leaves no autopsy evidence, so why did the ME put that down?”

“His best guess at first. She was on Propranolol. Ever hear of it?”

“Actually, I have,” she said, looking up at him. “It can calm panic attacks or anxiety syndrome. And, yes—it lowers blood pressure and heart rate, so you have to be careful with it. I only know about it because a friend who does amateur theater in Naples uses it to calm her stage fright. But it says here it didn’t show up on tox reports.”

“Not the first one. Keep reading. Propranolol has to be screened for specifically and, knowing Francine has been prescribed it, the ME ran another test and found it. Lots. Too much. Serious overdose. Otherwise her death could have been declared a heart attack or cardiac arrhythmia, and we wouldn’t be going through all this.”

“Which—if she was murdered—the killer could have been banking on.” She kept skimming the lines of print. “So the question is, did she accidentally overdose—or intentionally—or did someone help her to overdose? Someone who knew the power and danger of this panic attack drug.”

“That’s it. And because Jasmine happened to find her, and they had rather publicly disagreed on whether the mansion and estate should go in trust to the state, be sold or be kept in the family...”

“Jasmine’s their number one suspect, but they can’t prove it.”

“They’re working on it, though. And now you’ve got the case. I won’t say this again or try to push you on it, but I’m telling you, Jasmine’s not a murderer.”

“You’ve evidently known her for a long time and well. Maybe I should interview you first.”

“If I can help—be a character witness, whatever. But I knew Jasmine best years ago. My father’s ties to Francine, not Jasmine, go even further back. He and Francine were romantically involved before he married my mother.”

“You said earlier you aren’t emotionally tied to Jasmine now.”

He cleared his throat, glanced back out his side window, signaled and did a lane change. She saw the sign ahead to I-4 toward Orlando that would take them across the state to the other coast.

“The fairest thing to say is I’m involved with proving her innocence. I still care for her deeply. But not romantically—free as a bird.”

Claire recalled how Darcy had said he was a ladies’ man. He was avoiding her question again. She’d told him that was one way people avoided the truth, so was he testing her tenacity? She had to admit she didn’t really know him, except he seemed a sort of knight in shining armor to want to help Jasmine, evidently others, too, through his shadowy South Shores company. If she didn’t need another quick nap, she’d question him again on that, but there would be time enough. Riding in a car always made her nod off, so if she was the one driving, she prepped herself with stimulants—not only coffee, but her favorite, hand-made-in-Naples dark chocolates.

She skimmed the death certificate itself. Mode of death: cardiac arrest from cardiac arrhythmia. Cause of death, overdose of beta-blocker Propranolol. But under Manner of Death where the boxes to be checked were natural, homicide, suicide and accident was written, UNDER INVESTIGATION.

* * *

As they left the series of Disney World exits behind and passed the tall buildings of downtown Orlando, Nick stole quick glances to watch Claire sleep. He’d done a lot of fast reading last night on narcolepsy and cataplexy. A weird and dangerous disease, but she obviously coped well with it. And with being a single mom and starting her Clear Path consulting firm. He knew how hard it was to get something off the ground from when he fought like hell to resurrect his father’s tarnished law firm.

Claire Britten was innocent-looking, almost angelic, as she slept. Her trust in him moved him deeply. He prayed he would not betray it. She’d shared with him about her Achilles’ heel, so should he tell her about his? That he was hiding one of the real purposes of South Shores, something that was a risk for him. Hopefully, not for her.

One of the secrets his dad had hidden from most people was that he loved writing poetry. Didn’t fit with the image of hard-hitting attorney-at-law. The so-called suicide note left beside his hand holding the gun had one line which read, I will be safe on those South Shores forever more.

No way his dad had shot himself, however bad it looked, despite that poetic touch in the note! If it was the last thing Nick ever did, he’d prove it and nail who killed him. He knew who that was, or thought he did. Trouble was, Nick knew he, too, was being stalked. But by his dad’s killer or by someone else he had let down? He had enemies. Most criminal lawyers did.

Claire stirred so suddenly he wondered for a second if he’d said that out loud. He shot another fast glance at her. Waking, she looked dazed, upset, maybe surprised she was here with him in a rain-coated car. Was that look of dismay she quickly hid part of being between the worlds of sleep and wakefulness? He’d read that PWNs sometimes had terrifying waking nightmares.

“Still raining, I see,” she said, shifting her hips in her seat. She arched her back and stretched her good arm.

He shifted in his seat, too, and cleared his throat. “Letting up a little.”

“I warned you about my naps. That beef sandwich hit the spot. Lexi would have a fit if she knew we were that close to Disney and didn’t visit the Magic Kingdom.”

“Yeah, well, when you see Shadowlawn, that will be enough magic kingdom for now.”

For a few minutes, they talked easily about everything and nothing, though he knew they should be back on track about the interviews she would have. Still, she’d been touchy about choosing those herself. He should have known she was tenacious, because she suddenly asked him in the midst of talk about their alma maters: “So at the University of Miami—is that where you met Jasmine?”

So, no more skirting around that, he thought. Actually, he didn’t trust lawyers who had a personal stake in a case, and here he was, with exactly that.

“That’s where and when I dated her,” he explained. “We discovered our parents’ past connection by accident—that her mother and my father had once been in love but had broken up. She figured it out when her mother met me, and wasn’t too pleased Jasmine and I were a couple.”

“Nothing like a bolt-from-the-blue coincidence—though I’ve learned chance meets often aren’t. Did you two ever figure out why they didn’t end up together?”

“No, but as for Jasmine and me, her mother seemed like a tyrant back then, raising her alone, and the scholarship boy didn’t fit in until later when I’d made good—then too late because Jasmine was married. It was hard to forgive Francine about that for a while, but I didn’t want to marry an heiress and move to north Florida anyway. All the Montgomery women from way back ran the roost and Shadowlawn. I mean from way back. They seemed to devour their men after they mated, like a male gator tried to if it got too near its hatchlings and, hopefully, was run off by the female. By the way, I have a small pamphlet Francine put together on the history of Shadowlawn in that packet with the other information—interesting reading for later.”

“Great, because that’s one thing I couldn’t research yesterday. I found info on a place called Kingsley Plantation but not Shadowlawn. And I can sympathize with Francine being overly protective of her only child and a daughter.”

Curious, she paged through the pamphlet. It included a family tree. The Montgomerys were a matriarchal family with the men dying young of disease or in wars, including the Civil War. Right after the Civil War, one man had met his death suddenly and violently, but it didn’t say how.

“Wow,” she said. “My actor friend Liz is always looking for a plot for a play. Couldn’t do much better than this. What interesting facts if Shadowlawn would become a state site.”

“Which Jasmine doesn’t want. Keep that in mind.”

She stretched and put the book aside. “The rain is letting up a little, isn’t it? Look at that large lake off to the right. I’ll bet this view is great on a sunny day.”

“That’s Lake Monroe on the Volusia-Seminole County line near Sanford, the little town that made national headlines in 2012. Remember the Trayvon Martin shooting by George Zimmerman, who called himself a neighborhood watch coordinator?”

“I do. And Zimmerman got off.”

“The seventeen-year-old was wearing a hoodie and looked suspicious. I always tell myself looks aren’t everything, but I know you read body language and that was a part of the case, too—witnesses were important. Anyway, we’ll soon pass over part of the lake on this elevated bridge, but I don’t know how much you’ll glimpse of the lake or Sanford in this weather.”

“So you’ve driven this stretch a lot.”

“Lately, yes. About two years ago, Francine hired me as a backup lawyer for the estate, so I’ve been back and forth. She still retains her longtime family lawyer who did her will, too, but he’s quite elderly and has been ill, so I’m slowly taking over. I can’t see hiring a plane when I can drive it in half a day. Look, Claire, I don’t want to alarm you, but I swear the white car behind us has been following us and he’s driving too damn close. No—don’t turn around. Just look in your side rearview mirror. Speaking of hoodies, it seems the driver’s wearing one, but it’s a warm day, and in a car...”

“I wish Heck had followed us. Want me to call him, see how far ahead he is, if you really think—”

“Wait. Maybe I’m wrong. The guy is going to pass us, I think. Must have been my imagination about some kind of nut or road rage. But—What the hell!”

They were on the outside lane on the elevated bridge over the water. The white car came abreast of them and swerved close. Nick jerked the wheel, moved them nearer to the edge. The barrier between them and a fall was barely door-handle high.

“Nick! Nick, look at him—the driver!” Claire cried and sucked in a ragged breath. “Am I—am I seeing that?”

Nick twisted his neck for an instant. Within a dark hoodie—no, a black shroud—was the pale, elongated and contorted face of a demon from an old horror movie. Claire screamed.

If that fiend face shoved them any farther, they were going off the edge.

6

Instead of trying to outrun the car or slam into it, Nick glanced behind and hit the brakes. Drop back! Get the idiot’s rear license plate...