Due Justice

Chapter 18

I had to find Carly before Hathaway did and persuade her to tell the rest of what she knew. One thing I agreed with Hathaway about; she hadn’t come clean with me on her conversations with Morgan and what they had been working on together. Whatever it was, it was enough to get Morgan killed and Carly might be next. Carly’s real motivation for keeping her conversations with Morgan secret should have occurred to me, but it didn’t. Not for a while, anyway.

I put on my running shoes and got my car keys. I went down the stairs two at a time, racing (decorously, of course) toward my car. I knew where the spare key to Carly’s apartment was and I would start there. She lives in a gated community and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get in without her consent. A year or so ago I was listed on her limited access list, and I hoped she hadn’t changed it. I needed to get to her apartment before Hathaway got there. I knew he would dispatch officers immediately, as soon as he figured out where she lived. He’d left in such a rage he hadn’t asked me, and the way he had behaved, I wasn’t sure I would have told him.

I drove my car about twenty-five miles an hour over the speed limit all the way from Minaret to Carly’s apartment complex in St. Pete Beach. It’s a 25-minute drive under normal conditions, and I made it in fifteen. Because St. Petersburg is outside Hathaway’s jurisdiction, I was hoping that it would take more than fifteen minutes to get a police car dispatched to Carly’s home, even if he could immediately locate the address.

As I pulled up into the guard station at the entrance to her complex, there were four cars in line ahead of me in the one lane driveway. I watched as the security guard talked to the driver of the first car. They were having a friendly chat about the weather, or the last Devil Rays baseball game at the Tropicana Dome or something. What seemed like an hour, and was probably no more than three minutes, passed while the security guard wrote out a visitor’s pass for the car and allowed it through the gate.

All of us inched up one car length. The routine was repeated with the second car, and then the third. By this time, I’d waited in line longer than it took me to drive there. Finally, finally, finally, the security guard approached my car. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “How are you today?”

I swallowed my impatience. Everyone else seemed to be on island time, so I tried to fit in by appearing laid back. I don’t think he could see my toes tapping, but I’m not sure. “Fine, thank you. I’m here to see Carly Austin. I think I’m on her access list. Please don’t call up. It’s her birthday and I want to surprise her.”  I smiled my brightest smile, flirting with him a little. How old was I when I figured out that older men are easily manipulated by a woman who flirts?

“And what’s your name, miss?  I’ll just look it up quickly and then I can let you in,” he said with a big, conspiratorial smile. I gave him my name as I looked in my rear view mirror.

I could see no police cars, or at least no marked police cars, either behind me in line or coming up the driveway. There was a satisfyingly long line developing, and I was pretty sure that a police car would have the same difficulty getting through the gate I’d had. Once the cars had lined up at the guard shack, there was nowhere for them to go but through the gate into the complex. The cops would have to wait their turn like everybody else.

Eventually, the guard returned from the shack with my visitor’s pass and a smile. He opened the gate and waived me through. He said, “Say happy birthday to Ms. Austin for me. I thought she was out of town. She’s one of our most pleasant residents and I haven’t seen her much lately.”

“Thank you,” I sang, smiling and wiggling my fingers at him as I went through the gate, watching the orange and white arm of the gate fall down behind my car.

I drove into the complex, looking all the while for a police car or uniformed police officers from Pinellas County or the City of St. Petersburg. I didn’t see any.