CHAPTER EIGHT

Tampa, Florida

Monday 2:00 p.m.

January 29, 2001

MARGARET HAD GONE OUT for lunch, which was unusual but not unprecedented. I didn’t see her before she left, so I couldn’t ask about her fainting spell this morning, but I was worried. I picked up the phone and called Chief Hathaway’s office. He wasn’t there. I left a message. I drummed my fingers on the desk, thinking about who could give me some answers. I picked up the phone and dialed Marilee Aymes.

“Dr. Aymes’ office,” the receptionist said, with as much enthusiasm as I display for over-cooked spinach.

“This is Judge Carson. Is Dr. Aymes in?” I asked, brusquely, and she agreed to check. I’ve learned that if you don’t act important with these receptionists, they actually think they don’t have to let you talk to the doctor. It’s easier to call the CEO of Microsoft than to get past a physician’s receptionist.

“What’s up?” Marilee’s office persona is about the same as her personal and private ones. For years, she was Tampa’s only woman cardiologist and she was still the best. She’s also brash, bossy, brusque and more than a little overbearing. I think she’s a hoot, but George says I shouldn’t be seen with someone so “unsuitable.” I suspect he thinks she’s unsuitable because she does whatever the hell she wants. To George, such conduct isn’t becoming, honorable or appropriate. He can be awfully stuffy sometimes.

“Sounds like you’re busy?” I asked tentatively. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have without Marilee’s full attention.

“Always. But it’s Monday. Everybody saved their heart attacks from the weekend for today. The waiting room is jammed. I’ll be lucky to get done here by seven o’clock.”

“So I guess a drink around five-thirty is out of the question, then?” I looked at the gold and platinum Cartier watch George had given me for our last anniversary. It was about two o’clock now. I needed to get home to my guests, but I wasn’t impatient to do so. It was clear that Dad and Suzanne knew how to amuse themselves and George would be working until much later.

“Lemme look. Hey, girls, what’s the wait look like?” she shouted to someone in the other room. “Umm. Ok. I could make it by six-thirty. How’s that? Wanna meet at your place?” She asked me.

“How about Bella’s? That’s between here and there.” I suggested a local Italian bistro with a nice bar and some quiet booths on South Howard, or “SoHo” as the area was now being called. She agreed and hung up without signing off. I called George’s office and left a message that I’d be later than usual, but home by seven-thirty at the latest.

I’d finished my tuna sandwich and now I wanted a cookie. I had just enough time to run down to the cafeteria to get one before my next conference. So, I picked up my purse and, preoccupied with my thoughts, made my way quickly past Margaret’s empty desk and through the door to the hallway.

Without watching where I was going, I literally bumped into Otter, who had his hand on Margaret’s elbow as they argued in hushed tones outside the door to my chambers. When I practically knocked them down, Otter stepped away from Margaret and looked up, but Margaret was so engrossed she didn’t notice I was there.

“But we’re not young enough to waste any more time. Ron is dead now. Nothing will bring him back,” she pleaded.

“Hello, Judge,” Otter said, loudly enough to interrupt Margaret and too loud for the quiet hallway of our surroundings.

“Hello, Mr. Otter. Margaret.” I nodded at them both. “Something I can help you with?”

“No, Judge,” Margaret had composed herself. “We were just talking.”

“You two friends?” I asked the obvious question.

“We were. Once. A long time ago,” Margaret said. “I need to get back to work. Excuse me.”

She left us to return to the office. Otter watched her go and continued to look uncomfortable standing there alone in the hallway with me.

“What was that about?” I asked him, not really sure I wanted to know. Margaret was all alone in the world. I didn’t want to think she had any relationship, ever, with Armstrong Otter.

Based on what I’d heard this morning he wasn’t the kind of man I’d want anyone involved with. If he had taken advantage of the widow in the Fitzgerald House case he might take advantage of Margaret, too.

She had told George and me that Ron’s life insurance and other assets would leave her financially well off. And she was particularly vulnerable right now. Exactly the kind of situation I had imagined the Fitzgerald House widow was in when she’d had her unsavory encounter with Otter.

The morning’s fainting spell had proved that Margaret was unhappy and upset and trying valiantly to stay composed. Nothing good could come of any association between Margaret and Armstrong Otter. I didn’t have to know more about him to know that.

I was in a position to rescue Margaret from herself, right now. So I went into what George calls my Mighty Mouse routine. You know, from the old cartoon where the mouse dresses up like Superman and flies through the air singing, “Here I come to save the Daaaaaayyyyy.” It’s a bad habit that I’ve tried to break.

George tells me, “Willa, if someone wants your help, they’ll ask for it. You don’t have to be everyone’s hero. Some people don’t want to be rescued, you know. If they want your help, they’ll ask for it.”

I know that. But it’s against my nature to turn my head when my friends are in trouble.

Maybe Margaret’s wish right now was not to be rescued. But that could only be because she didn’t realize what she was dealing with. If the fraud claims Fitzgerald House was making against Otter were true, I didn’t want Margaret involved with this guy, whether she thought she wanted to be or not. Especially until Ron Wheaton’s autopsy came back and Ben Hathaway was satisfied that he’d died of natural causes.

Nothing makes a cop more suspicious than a new widow with a man friend who has a questionable past.

“Margaret recognized me as an old friend, that’s all. We were just catching up,” Otter said, like it was true. Maybe it was.

“Mr. Otter, you are a defendant in a case in my courtroom. Please don’t contact Margaret again until this case is over. After that, what you do is your own business,” I told him, not as harshly as I could have.

He shouldn’t be having private conversations with Margaret about the case. Otherwise, litigants have social conversations with court personnel all the time. It’s not a problem. But I was hoping he didn’t know that, and that he wouldn’t discuss it with CJ. If Otter did as I asked, it might give Margaret time to come to her senses and decide on her own not to become involved with him in any way.

Beyond that, my staff isn’t supposed to be personally involved with litigants in cases in my courtroom. It appeared that Margaret and Otter had been arguing. That suggested more of a personal relationship than I could ethically allow.

If any member of my staff did know Otter personally, the knowledge would have to be disclosed to all parties and dealt with. I might even be required to recuse myself from the case, if the involvement had gone too far.

“Of course, Judge, I understand. I’m sorry,” Otter said as he turned off to leave the building.

I watched him until he reached the elevator lobby, pushed the button, got in and the doors closed behind him. My sweet tooth had evaporated, but I went quickly, bought my cookie and returned in less than fifteen minutes to finish my conferences.

After the last of the lawyers left, I should have spent the rest of my time on my work, but of course I spent the time dwelling on Margaret instead.

What was Margaret’s connection to Armstrong Otter? Ordinarily, she wouldn’t even know the man. Otter traveled in circles that were way beyond Margaret’s usual social life.

He was a local celebrity, in a small town way. He’d been an award winning jeweler in Pass-a-Grille, the little beach community just south of St. Pete Beach in Pinellas County, across the bay from here, for at least as long as I’d been in Tampa.

Yet I’d never met him before Saturday. Who was this guy and why had he upset Margaret enough to cause her to faint? Because, although there were other people in the courtroom when she collapsed, somehow I felt that Margaret was involved with Armstrong Otter. I was concerned based on what I’d learned about Otter today in the Fitzgerald House case.

Fitzgerald House claimed that the deceased widow hadn’t just spent a million dollars on jewelry that Otter sold her, she had spent every cent she owned. She believed, because he told her so, that the jewelry was “one of a kind,” with a “special history.”

He told the woman that the necklace and earrings she’d bought had been designed by the legendary Tiffany’s designer, Paulding Farnham, and had belonged to Marilyn Monroe. He showed the widow pictures to prove it.

Otter sold the pieces to her as an investment that would increase in value more significantly than any other investment she could make. The widow died believing that she had left her favorite charity, operated by the little woman who was now the chair of the Fitzgerald House board and the widow’s closest friend, a legacy.

When the widow died, Fitzgerald House had the necklace and earrings appraised to be sold. They had an actual value of about forty thousand dollars.

The pieces did look like the pictures of a set Marilyn Monroe had worn to the Academy Awards in 1953, and they might have been. But if she’d worn these particular gems, they were fakes then, too.

Otter’s only defense so far was to admit that the stones were not real, but to claim the widow knew that when she paid him more than twenty times their value. He said that Marilyn Monroe had actually worn the jewelry, and it had been costume jewelry at the time.

As memorabilia, Otter claimed, the gems were actually worth a million dollars, and suggested that Fitzgerald House simply sell them. Otter had counter-sued for defamation and damage to his business reputation caused by the claim, too. That was a pure intimidation tactic, I thought.

Working at my desk, I got caught up in the Fitzgerald House file as the time passed me by. Margaret stopped to talk to me on her way out at five o’clock.

“What happened today, Margaret? What caused you to faint this morning? Are you all right?”

“Willa, I know you’re trying to help,” she stood in the doorway to my office with her purse in her hand and her coat on, tying a scarf around her head against the wind.

Margaret got her hair done once a week and didn’t touch it between beauty appointments. It always looked exactly the same. Her style was short, teased and varnished, not merely sprayed—a product of a bygone age.

“I mean this as kindly as I can say it. Please don’t interfere in my private life.”

“Margaret, you’re not yourself right now, and you know how much George and I care about you.” I jumped in without really hearing her or letting her finish her sentence. “Ron’s illness and his death have been so hard on you. The stress must be overwhelming. It’s not a time for you to make any big decisions.”

“I appreciate your concern. Truly. I do. But I’ve been on my own since I was a young girl, long before you were born. Let me handle myself.”

She said this in the same tone everyone uses to tell me to mind my own business, as she buttoned her coat and turned to go.

“If you need anything, you’ll let me know?” I asked her.

She smiled her indulgence, “Sure, Mighty Mouse. I’ll yell for help before I need it. Goodnight.” She turned around to leave, but changed her mind. “There is something you can do for me, though. Talk to your friend Dr. Aymes and tell her not to sue Otter, okay?”

“Why is Marilee Aymes going to sue Otter?”

“You’ll have to ask her. All he told me was that it was a big misunderstanding.” This time she did turn and leave quietly.

Margaret had no idea what kind of trouble she could be in. I had to help her, whether she wanted me to or not, I persuaded myself.

Margaret was all the way out of the building before what she’d said actually resonated with me. When would Otter have told Margaret anything about Dr. Marilee Aymes?