CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tampa, Florida

Saturday 7:00 a.m.

February 24, 2001

SATURDAY MORNING OF THE Gasparilla Distance Classic was cold and clear. I dressed as warmly as I dared and headed downtown. The race started at Morgan and Cumberland Streets and finished at Brorein and Tampa Streets. I was running in the 15k race, and I hoped to place in the top three.

I’m not a racer normally, and I don’t take care of myself well enough to compete in serious races. I eat too much rich food, drink too much gin, and even the occasional smoking I do cuts down on my wind. Most good days, I run about an eight-to-nine minute mile. The Distance Classic isn’t age adjusted, so I’d have to run my best times and then some to win.

Despite the odds, I was motivated to win more than the other runners. I still believed in the little engine that could, mind over matter, visualization, and all that. I’ve always had high aspirations and a finely-honed capacity for self-delusion.

I wanted to win the full $20,000 donation for Young Mothers’ Second Chance. My mother had been a single mom for five years, from the time my biological father was killed while she was pregnant, until she’d married Jim Harper. She always told me how hard it had been to take care of a baby by herself.

I’d taken on the cause of single mothers several years ago, sat on the Second Chance board of directors, and raised money for the organization whenever I could to repay Mom. Not that she would approve of my motivation. Mothers do things for their children without thought of creating an interest-bearing receivable.

Even so, not being a mother myself was somewhat justified by my volunteer efforts to support single moms. Some of the young mothers we sponsored had been able to finish college and get good jobs. I’d been working with this organization for many years and this year’s race money would be the largest contribution I’d ever managed.

On the theory that we should run before the day’s temperatures rose above comfortable levels, the race was scheduled to take off at eight-fifteen. This was usually good planning, but this year, it was wishful thinking. Runners wore long pants, headbands and gloves on hands that held the warm water we were drinking as we waited for the gun, dancing around in the cold to keep our muscles warm. The 5k run was scheduled to begin immediately after ours and then the wheelchair race would roll. We were holding everyone up, but many of the 12,000 runners who had planned to come hadn’t arrived and the organizers wanted to wait for them until the last minute. The longer we waited, the colder I became.

Eventually, the organizers told us to line up, and the starting gun gave us our cue to run like hell for just under ten miles. I quickly found myself in the middle of the pack, gasping heavily and watching my jerky, visible breath in the chilly air. Everyone around me was younger by ten years or more, so I guess I was doing well for my age group, which was beginning to feel like the “over 90” crowd.

There were older runners in the pack, but they were in the back and would be content just to finish. Before we started, I had had the conceit to believe I could win. Not just my class, but overall. Nothing like young bodies in top form to remind me of the mileage my body had already traveled. Now I realized I’d be lucky if I didn’t die.

After about two miles, I began to get into the race and to warm up. I tried to put on a little speed and at least get nearer the front of the pack. The problem was that younger, faster runners were getting warmed up, too, and they stayed in front of me the whole way.

When I glanced to my left, I saw Sandra Kelley on the sidelines, cheering a young man who must have been one of the Kelley children. His resemblance to Gil Kelley was unmistakable; if he was about twenty years younger, they’d be twins. Which was curious in its own way, I remember thinking, since Sandra was more than twenty years younger than Gil. They had a three-generation family. And then I had to concentrate on the rest of the run.

Maybe the old girl still has it, but not enough of it. I managed to finish in the middle of the pack. I wasn’t last, but I was nowhere near first. The promoters gave me my participatory tee-shirt and congratulatory approval for the pledges I’d obtained from corporate sponsors if I finished the race. I found myself walking around near the finish line, panting hard, sweating profusely, unable to talk and breathe at the same time.

Why did I do all that training if it wasn’t going to make a bit of difference? Running alone and running in a race are not the same. Maybe it helps to think you can, but I’m here to tell you, positive thoughts alone cannot make you a fast runner.

Walking around with my head down, looking at the ground, trying to catch my breath and keep my legs from cramping, I didn’t see Sandra Kelley until I ran right into her and spilled most of the bottle of water I had in my hand all over her.

“I’m sorry, Sandra,” I said, as I tried ineffectually to brush the water off of the bulky fur coat she wore.

I snagged my hand on the sharp edge of the large, elaborate pin she had on the lapel. I stuck my hand in my mouth, trying to make it feel better, without success, thinking it more than a little ridiculous for her to be wearing a mink coat.

It wasn’t that cold. Only about forty-five degrees, not minus forty-five. She wore the coat just like she did everything else—to show off who she was and what she had.

If your husband owns the bank, you damn well better look the part, seemed to be her motto.

“Don’t worry about it, Willa. It’s not the only thing you’ve ruined lately,” she said, sourly, as she tried to move past me, wiping my blood off her jewelry. But the crowd of runners, well wishers and fundraisers was too thick to let her go through. She was stuck next to me, unable to get away.

“I have (puff puff ) no idea (puff puff ) what you’re (puff puff) talking about,” I huffed and puffed and mumbled in her general direction, around the hand in my mouth. Really, I couldn’t believe how out of breath I was. I had been running fifteen to sixteen miles a day for weeks. Could it possibly be just the cold? The stress? Too much food at dinner last night? What?

“Your kind never does,” she snarled. “You go through life thinking you can just do whatever you want and damn the consequences.” She turned her back to me.

This was just too much. I took her arm and pulled her around. Mustering all of my wind, I said in one complete sentence, “Exactly what the hell are you trying to say?”

She looked down at my bleeding hand clutching a big hunk of the fur on her coat along with her arm. The look could have dropped a flying quail at fifty yards. She made me feel even colder than I already was. People aren’t often downright nasty to me. I’m not used to it.

“Do you think exposing thefts at Gil’s bank is going to be a good thing for his depositors? For the city? Did you think for one minute that just the scandal of the investigation itself wouldn’t harm us?”

I dropped her arm like it had singed my fingers.

Why had I thought she looked anything like Margaret Wheaton? Margaret would never, ever say anything so vicious.

Sandra looked feral. She frightened me. I’d never thought of Sandra as dangerous, but I’d underestimated her.

“I’m not investigating Gil or his bank, Sandra. I don’t think anything about it.”

“Did you think we’d just take that? From you?”

Was she threatening me?

“What are you saying?”

“Watch yourself, Willa Carson. You’re not untouchable. I’d have thought you’d learned that by now.” She moved off and the crowd quickly filled in the void behind her.

I was cold, sweating, tired, my hand was stinging, and I was more than a little shocked. I needed to go home, have a hot bath, a pot of hot tea and get out my journal.

Now was definitely the time for some serious thinking.

It seemed to me that all of South Tampa had completely taken leave of its senses.