CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tampa, Florida

Saturday 8:30 a.m.

February 17, 2001

BY THE TIME I made it to the kitchen, George was alone, reading the paper and drinking coffee in his white pajamas and the royal blue silk robe he favors. I smiled as I noticed the blue silk scuffs on his feet, too. How many men dress like that these days? Damn few, I figured, given the casual look that has become so popular with the Generation Xers.

I’m an old-fashioned girl. Give me Cary Grant in his silks anytime over those rugged Xers with their hip-hugging pants, tight shirts and scratchy, unshaven faces.

“Morning, darling,” he said, eyeing my journal on the corner of the kitchen table and the leftover tea things. “Manage to run your cares away?” George knows me too well.

“Not all of them,” I told him as I made my café con leche and Cuban toast. Usually I don’t eat breakfast, but I’d been up so long this was practically lunch time. “Where is everyone?”

“We should talk about Jim and Suzanne, you know. It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to go away by itself. In fact, I’d say we’re soon going to have even more to think about,” George told me gently.

“Like what?” I was still fooling around with the toast. It takes longer to toast half a loaf of Cuban bread than you might think, even if you don’t put the cheese on it, which is the way I eat it.

“Jim told me they want to have several children. This isn’t going to be the only one. You’ll have a much bigger family than you expected. It’s something you’re going to have to deal with.”

This wasn’t altogether surprising, really. Suzanne is young and she told me she loves children. I expected her to want more of them, at least in the abstract. These things have a way of working themselves out once the reality of 3:00 a.m. feedings sinks in.

“I know,” I told him.

“Then why are you so resistant to the whole thing? I’d think Jim’s happiness would be important to you. Isn’t it time for you to show him what you’re made of?”

“Funny. I thought I was.” I took the toast from the oven and added the cheese, returning it to the broiler.

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Jim Harper wasn’t much of a father to me. He thought of me as ‘in the way’ when Mom was alive and he wanted her all to himself. And he just left me alone for years after Mom died. If it hadn’t been for Kate and her family, I’d have had nothing resembling a normal life.” I put the cheese toast on the plate and sat across from George at the table.

“All of that was years ago, Willa. People often attempt to repeat their lives and improve on the job they did the first time around. You have the ability to be a hero, here. To show Jim, Suzanne and everyone else that you’re a bigger person than most. To live up to everyone’s expectations of you. Including your own.” George was attempting his personal brand of gentle persuasion. What he meant was I had a chance to live up to his standards.

To George, it was always of utmost importance to do the right thing, the honorable thing; to go one’s own way; “to thine own self be true” and all that.

George thinks the only one we have to please is ourselves, and that we should have exacting standards for our own behavior. This, of course, leads to constant disappointment when others don’t behave as well.

Such as one’s wife when her father marries a woman half his age and begins to act like the father he never was.

I said nothing as I ate my toast and reached for the front page of the Tribune. After a few moments of silence, George got up, put his dishes in the sink, and kissed my head as he walked by to get dressed for the very long day we had ahead of us.

A short while later, the telephone rang twice and I got up to answer it. “Is that son-of-a-bitch, Jim Harper, there?”

A woman’s voice. One I recognized.

“Hello? Sandra? It’s Willa Carson. Dad’s not here right now. Can I help you?” I thought I heard growling from Sandra Kelley in response.

“Yes, you can help me. Did you know your father was in Miami snooping around Gil’s bank this week?”

“Not really, I . . .”

“You can tell him that we don’t appreciate him suggesting that Senior was a thief. Gil is damned upset about it, and so am I. You can tell him that for me.” She was breathing heavily as she spoke to me in loud, angry tones.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about this, Sandra, but I’m sure you both are upset. I’d heard that you were suggesting Senior had embezzled money from his bank, though. Didn’t you expect people to take you seriously about it?”

“You just tell Jim Harper to keep his nose out of our business or he’ll have someone else to answer to!” she actually shouted at me—just before she slammed down the phone.

I looked at the receiver and then replaced it as George came back.

“She hung up on me,” I said.

“I figured that. If I was an eavesdropper, I could have heard the entire conversation from the other room,” he said. “Actually, I did hear every word she said. No surprise. Surely you didn’t think she’d take it well—Jim going into her husband’s bank and asking questions about thefts by Senior Kelley.”

I frowned at him. It was okay for me to be upset with Jim, but I didn’t like Sandra Kelley’s tone. I’d always thought she was more than a little unstable.

“Do you have any idea what your Dad’s been doing in Miami?” George asked.

“He didn’t really tell me. He mentioned last week that he was doing a bank investigation. I didn’t realize he meant Tampa Bay Bank.”

The hordes would descend on George’s restaurant later today. Using my downtime wisely, I headed over to Pass-a-Grille to see The Armstrong Otter Studio for myself. Driving over the bridge from Plant Key to Bayshore Boulevard, I turned left and then right onto Gandy, heading due west. As I drove, I assured myself the visit was not unethical.

Otter had invited me to come over. I didn’t intend to speak to him. And I wasn’t sitting in a bench trial, I rationalized.

Nor did I intend to rely on what I learned to make a decision in any case. Besides that, based on what I’d read in the U.S. v. Otter file, I was the only person in Tampa who had never seen the studio.

Some people, like the CJ, would say my visit had the appearance of impropriety. But so did smoking in my office, which I sometimes did, too. Nothing I said in my imaginary argument convinced me to turn the car around.

Gandy Boulevard begins at the Bayshore, runs for about five miles as a busy commercial highway, and then becomes a bridge connecting Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

Gandy Bridge is the third and southernmost bridge connecting the two counties and helping to form the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area, as the Chamber of Commerce likes to call it.

Until the advent of crass commercialism joined the counties in their search for tourist dollars, sports franchises, and business development, the two counties couldn’t have been more separatist. Today, we’re just one big happy family. Or so the Business Journal would have us believe.

In any event, I passed the beach areas where the thong-bikini clad hot dog vendors used to stop traffic—literally—until they were banned as “unhealthy.” Those women had looked mighty healthy to me, but I easily believed they were a traffic hazard.

The fifty million tourists who visit us every year stop on the entrance ramps before merging on the freeway, turn right from the left-hand lane, and drive the wrong way on Tampa’s many one-way streets to make driving a death-defying experience. We don’t need one more traffic problem.

My opinion had absolutely nothing to do with my own personal appearance should I ever have considered wearing a thong-bikini. Really.

Once I reached I-275, I could put the pedal to Greta’s metal and speed down to exit 4, the Pinellas Bayway. For a mere fifty-cent toll each way, this little stretch of highway connects St. Petersburg with St. Pete Beach, just north of my eventual destination.

Between here and there is Eckerd College, the road to Fort DeSoto Park, and quite a few golf courses next to high-rise condominiums. All of that passes before the Intra-Coastal Waterway that separates the mainland from the barrier islands, including St. Pete Beach and Pass-a-Grille, further south.

The Bayway ends right at the doorstep to my favorite famous old hotel, the Don CeSar. The Don was built in the 1920s and, as I said, was a vacation spot favored by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, among other flapper era swells. During World War II, the Don served as a hospital for recuperating RAF pilots. A recent multi-million dollar renovation brightened up its pink and white, birthday cake exterior.

The Don’s current owner was an insurance conglomerate. They created a spa and resort that welcomed guests who would visit for a few hours instead of a few weeks. A sign in the lobby said, “You don’t have to stay here to play here.”

That philosophy had done much to return the Don’s financial situation to the pink, too. We’d been invited to several weddings and parties here the last few years, and they were always beautifully done.

I turned left at the Don and drove under the second-floor entry way, traveling at the staid twenty-five miles an hour required on Pass-a-Grille Way, down to Eighth Avenue and the business district.

Being a Saturday in the middle of the high season, there was no hope of finding a good parking spot. I cruised up and down the short one-block street a couple of times before resigning myself to the ravenously hungry parking meters at the beach side on Gulf Way.

Overstaying the meter here can cost thirty dollars or more. The local paper boasted the amount of increased revenue the town collected from over-parked tourists each year.

I walked back to Eighth Avenue from the Gulf side and realized that I might never have really looked at these little shops before. There weren’t many of them, but the shops they had were quite nice.

A hair salon with a small lending library; an upscale sportswear store, two gift shops that didn’t have a single pink flamingo in the window but displayed pottery, oil and watercolor works by local artists.

On the south side of the street was the famous jeweler, Evander Preston’s place. The beautifully painted Chinese red doors had a doorbell on the left doorjamb and a sign beneath it listing Preston’s “hours of availability.”

On the north side of the street was Armstrong Otter’s gallery. It wasn’t as impressive as Preston’s, but it had the same look about it.

Otter’s door was painted a bright green and his doorbell had a sign listing his hours. He was open “by appointment” on Saturday from ten until two o’clock. It was eleven-thirty.

I pushed the lighted nose of a Newfoundland, hearing the discreet chime of the bell inside.

A woman opened the door. “Welcome,” she said, “have you been to Armstrong’s before?” When I told her I hadn’t, she said, “Only the jewelry is for sale. Everything else is for your viewing pleasure. Please look around and let us know if we can help you.”

As I said, I’d been to Preston’s shop before, so I expected Armstrong Otter’s copy to be similar. Otter displayed an eclectic collection of autographed and personalized lithographs, hand-thrown pottery, brass sculptures and, on the walls, a few photographs of himself with celebrities.

There were pictures of Otter with Donald Trump, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Buffett and other celebrities with ties to Florida.

The jewelry itself was avant-garde in most respects. Stashed behind glass, on the walls, and in jewelry cases near the discreet cash register, several different artists were credited with design.

The most interesting display was one entire wall of jewelry devoted to designers Otter employed who had, at various times, won the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts’ Emerging Artist Award.

After I’d been looking for about twenty minutes, the rail-thin hostess who’d greeted me returned. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“I’m unfamiliar with Mr. Otter’s work. Can you tell me a little about it?”

She handed me a small brochure with “Armstrong Otter” inscribed in gold calligraphy on a bright green cover embossed with the head of a Newfoundland, a large, black dog that closely resembles a St. Bernard.

Reciting what sounded like rehearsed lines, she began, “This tells Armstrong’s story and gives you some examples of his work. He’s probably most well known for nurturing new talent and allowing promising young designers to create new pieces under his tutelage. Armstrong and his protégés have won many national art prizes. The piece he plans to submit to the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts is in this display.”

She directed me to a glass case in the middle of the room. In a voice that she might have used to introduce the Hope diamond, she whispered, “This is Gasparilla Gold. Isn’t it fabulous?”

The piece was even more spectacular than it had looked in the photograph Otter showed us. The gold and jewels sparkled in the center of a white background. It was smaller, though, than it had looked in the photo.

“Do you think this piece will win first prize?” I asked her, feigning an equal level of reverence.

“Oh, we hope so,” she gushed. She clasped her hands together as if in prayer.

I glanced briefly at the brochure she’d given me. “I see Mr. Otter is also well known for collecting and reselling ‘Jewels of the World.’ What are they, exactly?” I hoped my voice contained just the right mix of interest and curiosity.

“Let me show you,” she said, as she led me to another cabinet on the opposite wall. “Here are several examples of what you’re talking about.”

She’d pointed to a photograph. “As you can see, this is a picture of Princess Grace of Monaco, wearing a sapphire necklace. And here, below the picture, is the necklace. Here’s another one: a picture of Princess Diana with a pearl ring on her pinky. The ring is right here,” she pointed to the ring as if I needed guidance to see the obvious.

Burying my annoyance at her patronizing attitude, I said, “This is amazing. How did Mr. Otter acquire such wonderful pieces? Aren’t they dreadfully expensive?”

And, I was thinking, aren’t they assets that could be attached to satisfy some of those claimants in the criminal case pending against Otter?